Up until now, we have educated our readers about what NFC is, its utility and how to use Android beam or SuperBeam to easily share files between devices. In this installment of NFC 101, we’d like to inform our readers about NFC tags, where you can buy them and how to write content to them.
What are NFC tags and how are they used?
NFC tags are well..umm NFC tags! They come in various shapes and sizes, including sticker forms, with a small NFC microchip inside that can store very little data. While the amount of information you can store is hardly a few Kilobytes, you can use NFC tags to automate many day-to-day tasks.
If you live in a first-world country, you may have travelled via Metro/Underground rail where you simply tap your Metro card against the terminal. Those metro cards contain small NFC tags that hold important but small information for the ticket terminal to identify you and display your balance and other relevant information.
In a similar way, you can use NFC tags to store small details like a contact card or web link, and most importantly automate trivial day-to-day tasks like toggling Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, setting an alarm, putting your phone to silent, checking-in to a location, and more.
Where to buy them?
There are a plethora of websites from where you can buy NFC tags of different shapes and sizes. Below are a few I personally recommend:
You can also use the good old eBay and Amazon to order NFC tags of your choice as well. There are even pre-programmed NFC tags from Samsung — known as TecTiles — but I wouldn’t recommend them since they are quite expensive.
How to write them?
To actually make an NFC tag useful, you will have to write data to it. Thankfully, this does not require any special hardware and you can easily write an NFC tag using your phone and some third-party apps from the Play Store like NFC Writer by Tagstand. By default, the app allows you to write a custom URL, Foursquare venue, Address book contact, Text, Email or Phone number to any NFC tag for some trivial tasks.
Simply select and enter the content that you want to store on the tag and then tap the Write Tag option. Then, bring the NFC tag to the back of the phone to write the content to it. Make sure not to write-protect the tag otherwise you will not be able to erase its content in the future.
Tomorrow, we tell you how to automate certain day-to-day tasks using NFC tags and your Android device, so stay tuned!
