Finally received my rings but...
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I finally received my rings but they got my wife's ring wrong. It was supposed to be classic black just like mine and not transparent like they sent. Not that it matters because they are both useless. The primary goal was to use these on pn532 NFC readers. The rings will register with the board as long as the ring is physically touching the board where all the components are on the board. Since the boards will need to be put into some sort of protective casing to prevent damage, the ring will be too far away to register all.
Good thing I waited 8 months to receive these. :/
P.S. I had to re-register for an account on these forums. It seems my account was deleted.
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The order isn't wrong - if you followed the kickstarter updates and blog updates as well as some of the conversations on here you'd notice that some orders had to be arbitrarily changed in order to ship.
Coloured metal rings are no longer possible as for every ten the factory made, only two were getting to Mclear co for QA testing there! Because of this and a few other reasons the line has now been discontinued.
Some other ring sizes and styles were also difficult to get from the factory and thus have also been changed.For those with changed orders there will be an opportunity to request and redeem a voucher for a ring of your choice after all kickstarter and pre-orders have been fulfilled and the guys have been able to build up a decent stock level. This way your order is made and sent straight away from stock on hand.
If you've been following any of the numerous threads on arduino compatible NFC readers you'll have noticed that the only one recommended is the original Elechouse PN532 V3. It is red, has two mounting holes, can be purchased from elechouse's website and works well with both Normal and Alpha versions of the ring. I've even shown mine to work at a reasonable distance.
From the sound of yours it is most likely a V2 board and/or a clone. This is typical behaviour for those with the NFC Ring.Depending how long you've been gone there's been a change from phpbb to nodebb and then a change for SSO with the NFC Ring websites, these will have required you to 'register' again using your original email and link to your current account name.
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As has been said previously, changing orders(I like how this is mentioned like it's just ok for a company to do) and not telling the customer directly is really poor customer service. How is the customer supposed to know that their order was "arbitrarily changed" as opposed to just getting the order wrong?
"Coloured metal rings are no longer possible"
So why are you still selling them?
http://store.nfcring.com/products/signature"For those with changed orders there will be an opportunity to request and redeem a voucher for a ring of your choice after all kickstarter and pre-orders have been fulfilled"
We're going on a year here. Also, letting your customers know this DIRECTLY would be a good idea. Email lists work just fine."the only one recommended is the original Elechouse PN532 V3"
https://www.dropbox.com/s/335pib5jotlmixa/2014-08-17 13.21.56.jpg
Any other excuses?"Depending how long you've been gone..."
https://forum.nfcring.com/topic/292/i-m-done-being-patient-time-to-complain/14
So you purge your users every 2 months?nfcring.com and it's employee's (NOT volunteers) should spend a little more time resolving issues and customer complaints and owning up to product limitations and faults instead of relying on community volunteers to make excuses.
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Well, that was all pretty angry and rude.
So you don't read, pay attention or want to discuss anything then?
I'll take my volunteer self somewhere else I guess. -
@leftyfb signature rings are not coloured metal, it's the coloured metal that causes us issues. Cheers for supporting the project.
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Normal (Classic) Ring in Titanium Normal Color Metal with a Black top inlay cover and a Silver bottom inlay cover in USA Ring Size 5.5
Normal (Classic) Ring in Titanium Normal Color Metal with a Black top inlay cover and a Silver bottom inlay cover in USA Ring Size 8
The 2nd ring as mentioned above, doesn't have a colored inlay like the first and is transparent. Neither of these rings will trigger the recommended pn532 v3 from Elechouse without directly touching a small area on the circuit board with the ring. Are both of them defective and should I request replacement and if so, will it take another 8 months to receive replacements?
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@leftyfb So did you get one black+silver and one transparent+silver? Feel lucky you got silver at all, it seems the factory is only capable of polishing black or transparent (speaking as someone who ordered a ring with silver inlay but was told it wasn't possible to get one).
Lokki answered your question about the PN532, and also gave some pointers as to why yours might not work ... does yours match the description given by Lokki and you're confident it isn't a clone? Does your ring work with other NFC devices such as Android phones?
And one more thing ...
So you purge your users every 2 months?
No, as Lokki said, there was a change in the website backend that would have caused the need to register AND then at a later date there was a change for SSO. So either of those could have caused you to reregister, depending on how long you've been gone. See? Simples, no purging or malicious culling involved at all. Occams Razor at it's finest.
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As I posted above, they are titanium rings with black inlay and transparent inlay. AFAIK, these are not considered colored rings. They are just titanium. AFAIK, these should be the rings with the least amount of issues.
Lokki told me that the recommended board is the Elechouse pn532 V3. I replied with a picture as proof that the board I ordered from Elechouses website is in fact the same one mentioned. Lokki gave no further answers or pointers.
The ring was able to register on a 2012 Nexus 7 when pressed against the back in 1 single spot.
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Forget the coloured rings problem, that was a red herring. Your AFAIK is not correct. As I said there were also problems with inlays, wood, purple, rainbow and silver are all ones that spring to mind as having problems.
RE: board problems. So the ring does work then just not on the board you've got... -
1 ring has a black inlay, the other is transparent. Both experience the limitations. So that's classic rings with black, transparent, wood, purple and silver. Is there any ring that doesn't have problems?
I have tried on 4 of the Elechouse pn532 V3 boards as well as the one from Adafruit. The Adafruit board is a little more forgiving and will function about 1/4 inch from the board. I'm not sure why you recommend the Elechouse over the Adafruit. Regardless, the Elechouse requires physically touching the board in order to register.
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@leftyfb You're a really hard person to try and help with constantly ignoring questions asked of you, completely (purposefully?) misunderstanding what has been told to you, and then you're quick to come back with something snide or accusatory because you've completely failed at some basic level of comprehension.
Let me be extremely clear for you, and try and spell out this discourse in easy-to-follow points. You came here with 3 problems:
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Order was wrong
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Rings don't work on your board
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You had to reregister your forum account
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Order was wrong
- You said "it was supposed to be classic black like mine and not transparent". Unfortunately this lead to some confusion and you were then given info about black plated rings, which isn't your problem at all.
- You then gave your desired order as two rings both black+silver, but said "2nd ring as mentioned above, doesn't have a colored inlay like the first and is transparent".
- I asked if this meant you received 1 ring in black+silver and one in transparent+silver (because the word 'coloured inlay' might mean the black one or the silver one, but from your first post I assumed you meant black and tried to clarify what you actually received. I also mentioned that the factory wasn't producing all the coloured inlays originally required of it, maybe I should have gone into more detail on that and linked to the actual updates posted on Kickstarter that cover this.
- Unhelpfully you then said "As posted above, they are titanium rings with black inlay and transparent inlay". But earlier you said "it was supposed to be classic black like mine", so did you get two different rings or not? If you got both rings with black then why did you start by saying "it was supposed to be black ..."? If you received black+transparent then surely it is the silver that is missing? This thread would be a lot quicker if you left out the attitude and just gave the bloody facts.
- You then said "AFAIK ... these should be the rings with the least amount of issues". I pointed out that it's not just the plating (i.e. black or blue rings) that has been a problem, and that there have also been production problems with inlays. I listed some of the ones that have been an issue. These have been mentioned in updates, along with the fact that the team have been substituting rings affected for ones they have in stock, and detailed what they're going to do to remedy it. Presumably you've been ignoring the Kickstarter update emails about this.
- You then blur the inlay production problems into the problems you are having with the board you bought, which are completely unrelated. Throwing in a 'is there any ring that doesn't have problems' doesn't help people help you.
tl;dr
Read the Kickstart updates to find out why your inlays may not match those you ordered.
- Rings don't work on your board
I don't really have much to add to this except you've shown that the ring works with
- A phone
- Another board
... but doesn't work with a particular board. It seems your beef is about the recommendation post here rather than the ring, because obviously the ring works just fine. From that recommendation, the user who recommended it didn't have your problems. I don't know what to say. Unfortunately you pissed off the one user who might have spared time to help you get to the bottom of this.
- Forum account deleted/purged
That's all cleared up now, I believe.
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@shama, thanks for helping sort things out here.
@leftyfb, if you are interested in attempting to sort through your issues with the PN532 boards then I am able to help out there. If you're interested in getting to the bottom of the problem and trying to sort something out then let me know and I'll skype you or something.
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@Lokki I am interested in triggering the ring using the PN532 V3 board by holding the ring at least 3/4" away. Not having to rely on physically touching the circuit board.
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@leftyfb I'm not sure how well you can judge the distance in this, but this is the edge of where I could read my ring with a V3 reader.
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I was actually getting slightly further with the board turned over and reading from the back of the unit.
It strikes me that 3/4 inch is a fair distance though, what's your use going to be? I've tried 3d printing a 3 to 4 mm thick housing for the board and it works fine through that from the back side - that's going to be in place of the key barrel in my vehicle. If I was doing a house lock I'd probably do pretty much the same thing, mount the reader back side facing out inside a printed enclosure.I can't give you any proper measurements at the moment for ring distance as those were test rings from a while back which have both died. My actual order will hopefully come soon and I can give you a definite answer.
I was also able to read all around the edge of the board with board and inlay on the desk, just pushing the ring inlay up close until it was within 4mm of the board edge. It definitely worked better either above or below the antenna but there were definite dead spots where the read distance was lower.
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Your ring is a lot larger with a larger RF antenna. My ring is:
Normal (Classic) Ring in Titanium Normal Color Metal with a Black top inlay cover and a Silver bottom inlay cover in USA Ring Size 5.5 (though I didn't get silver so now I have 2 black inlays which I can't tell the difference between).
The ring will not register if I am as far away as you are with either of my rings. I have to physically touch the center-left side of the board from the way your board is orientated in the picture. I will check again, but I'm pretty sure the ring did not register at all on the back of the board.
BTW, we have 10 of these boards and have tried this on 4 of them with the same result.
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@leftyfb, yeah noted. That's the only picture I took at the time, both rings were comparable in behaviour.
Signal was strongest following the antenna loops around the board with the inlay aligned lengthwise along the line of the antenna.
Left-center is directly above the PN532 IC itself isn't it? I had a read there, with a dead spot slightly above it, then the next read area from where you see in the picture and downwards, but with that dead spot slightly above the middle of the board.
Where'd you actually order your boards from?-as a side note, I'm running my board on 5 volts.
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The boards were ordered from Elechouse's website as stated 3 posts ago.
http://www.elechouse.com/elechouse/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=90_93&products_id=2242 is the exact product.
Our boards are running at 5V as well.
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Thank you for clarifying something which you hadn't made clear before now. There are 'Elechouse v3' marked clones out there which do not work as well but for all points and purposes look exactly the same.
This is why I asked where you actually ordered them from. The Elechouse website is extremely unlikely to sell clones, no?I have made a short video showing me read two (2) QA failed NFC Rings. The first one is an Alpha, the second one a Classic, to show that the antenna size makes stuff all difference to the distance at which they're triggering a read with the Elechouse V3 PN532.
This is also a 'good' read, giving full info and not just UID.
I am reading these from the back, to show you that it does work. Please note that the read distance on the back of the board is less than the read distance on the front would be! Note also that these are QA fails which don't work as well as QA pass rings and they're Stealth Bombers which are difficult to align and use. They still read, and at a distance.
To perform this test I have deinstalled my car starter unit and reprogrammed it with the "ReadTagExtended" example from the NDEF library. This is so that I know the hardware has no issues and the example no quirks.
If you've got anything set up already I recommend that you go back to a similar setup, try an example sketch that definitely works and use a very basic test setup to keep the guesswork at a minimum.edit: I should have pointed out that the flashing green light near the usb cable is happening on a successful read
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@leftyfb Don't misunderstand, I'm not implying that you're mistaken in anything, I'm showing you how mine functions and that it does work at a distance. You haven't offered much info on your use of the unit apart from it not working and I can't really do much else without more info.
Proximity to metal or other RF sources can alter the way the NFC field is generated which can in turn change where and how NFC devices will trigger in relation to the reader.
