RFID transponder cards no unique atr

Question

I bought some RFID transponder cards for building an identification system with the unique identifier on the cards. I setup a testenv under Ubuntu 12.04 and I work with the pcscd deamon and the scm scl011 card reader.

The problem is that all my cards have the same ATR and I cannot extract a unique id.

I used pcsc_scan for getting ATR's, then I tried a pyscard sample script to get most of the cards' ATR's. The result for the pyscard action was that a lot ATR's are not supported or they don't differ from the other card.

Does somebody have an idea what the problem is here?

• Link Transponder
• Pyscard

Answer 1

The cards of the same type should be expected to have the same ATR. You'll need to understand the attributes that go on your cards, including whether the vendor has pre-programmed them with tags, and if so, whether those tags include UIDs (that identify individual items) or EPCs (that identify just a class of item, as with barcodes in the grocery store). Almost certainly the vendor of your cards has not pre-programmed them, and you are expected to format them for your purpose prior to using them. If you were buying a bunch of physical ID cards for your employees, you wouldn't expect them to already have your employees' pictures and ID numbers on them - you need to put that information on the cards before issuing them to the employee.