Read RFID/NFC Tags or Cards

Some IDs, badges, labels, vouchers, and asset tags don’t have barcodes printed on them. Instead, they may simply have human-readable (HR) characters or use machine-readable (MR) technologies, such as RFID and NFC.

To capture HR characters, app users can use these options:

1. The app’s Manual Entry option.
2. The app’s Lookup option if there’s a database associated with the service.
3. The app’s ability to use “Optical Character Recognition” (OCR) when enabled on the Advanced Step’s scanner configuration tool.

Reading RFID/NFC UIDs and Content

A. Smartphones, tablets, and dedicated scanning devices.

1. NFC-enabled Apple and Android smartphones and tablets can read NFC tags with their built-in readers. We cover this in detail within this Knowledgebase article about scanning NFC IDs.
2. Dedicated scanning devices like those offered by Zebra and Honeywell can also feature built-in NFC readers.

B. Reading accessories.

1. The dual-frequency Wave ID Plus from rf IDEAS is one of several models that can read RFID/NFC access control and attendance ID cards. It is capable of reading most RFID/NFC cards available on the market, according to their specification. We cover this in detail within this Blog article about reading RFID/NFC IDs for attendance tracking. We tested it with smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, and Windows PCs.
2. The HID OMNIKEY 5027 may also be a good choice. We have not tested it yet but from HID’s published specification it looks to be a viable option.