Buying things

[Harald Welte]

Hi Robin!

Thanks for your inquiry.

Please note that I'm not speaking for bitmanufaktur.de (who do the
hardware sales), but just repeating my probably incomplete status
information:

On Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 12:40:09PM +0000, Robin O'Leary wrote:
 
> When I go to shop.openpcd.org to buy some toys, I find a couple of
> things marked 'out of stock', specifically the 'Official OpenPCD
> MIFARE Classic 1K RFID Card [MF-CLASSIC01]' and 'OpenBeacon USB node
> [USBNODE01]'.  
> There are other options for the Mifare cards, so that isn't a problem
> (although the alternatives are more expensive and harder to use?),

The mifare card should be available again within the next week.

> but it possible to do anything with Sputnik/OpenBeacon tags without the
> USB reader?

If you have a PIC programmer that supports the PIC controller used in
the OpenBeacon, you can use it without the USB reader.  What you could
do then is convert one of your openBeacon's into a RF / serial interface
(using a custom firmware) by using two pins on the header for serial
communication :)

This is way less powerful than the USB reader, obviously.

> Are the readers going to be available in future?  

As far as I know the contract manufacturer is having quite significant
delays, causing problems for bitmanufaktur.de :(

> Are they made to order?  

No, usually a couple should be in stock, AFAIK.

> Would it be best for me to order one or two at first, or, since I'm
> likely to ultimately want lots, to order more in a larger batch?

If you can indicate which quantity you will need at which point in time,
then the contract manufacturer can be contracted to produce the given
quantity.  The longer your lead time is, the better pricing you will
get.

> Can the Sputnik/OpenBeacon tags themselves can be used as 'readers'
> (with different firmware, obviously)?  

yes. see above.  both tags and readers are full transceivers.
difference is CPU power, program memory, RAM size and connectivity
options.  But the RF side is the same.

Cheers,
-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge at openpcd.org>          	         http://openpcd.org/
============================================================================
100% Free Software and Hardware RFID reader for 13.56MHz protocols
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