This app was mentioned in 29 comments, with an average of 2.79 upvotes
If you have an android phone with NFC, FareBot is pretty handy.
All you have to do is scan your EZ-Link card with your phone and you can view the last 30(iirc) transactions and the remaining card balance.
Farebot can scan your (initialized) Orca card and give you a brief trip history and your balance.
It doesn't load money or interact with the website/manage your card. But it is still pretty rad.
If it was recently, you can download this app that will read your ORCA card with just a tap and tell you what your balance is as well as recent trips including bus number.
> I can't find any details on how this is going to work for trains though. ... Or will fare enforcement be able to read your card to verify you swiped it before entering?
If it works like every other mass transit system I've used, you will tap on before entering the train, tap off when exiting, and fare enforcement will have mobile readers that can tell whether the card is tapped on or off. (In Seattle, fare enforcement has started using basic Android phones with what looks like a customized version of FareBot.)
Not familiar with iPhone, but on Android any NFC reader app should do – check out Metrodroid or FareBot. Then you just have to tap it to the back.
P.S. Great username, big fan of both.
You can check balances with Farebot:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codebutler.farebot&hl=en_US
Clipper cards use NFC. With an app like farebot, you can read a card with an Android phone to check your balance and your tag history.
That depends if it got any cracks in it (even small ones). If you have an Android phone you can install FareBot. If the card works with your phone's NFC then it's fine.
Also the pass is unlimited. Just get on a bus and try it and walk off.
> the card is merely coding a database key and the balance must be stored elsewhere and not on the card itself
That's not true. There is data on the Clipper card, not just a key. You can scan your card and get cash and trip information from it. I used FareBot when I had a phone with NFC.
Yeah, if you have an NFC-enabled phone/tablet, try downloading this app called Farebot - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codebutler.farebot&hl=en_US
It lists all my tags as well as balance history.
If you have an Android phone that supports NFC, FareBot is a cool app that lets you see your card's recent trip history, among other data stored on your card.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codebutler.farebot
> Aún con tarjeta se expende boleto en papel, es el control inmediato que tiene el usuario y el inspector. En el caso del inspector se podría implementar algun lector portátil de tarjeta, del lado del usuario no sé, upgradear la app de STM? ya que estamos sacar unas prepagas, más que nada para los que no pueden entrar en el sistema (turistas por ej.)
Justamente la idea es que no haya mas boleto. Los lectores portátiles existen y si las keys fueran públicas la tarjeta puede leerse con cualquier celular con NFC (la app FareBot funciona con tarjetas MIFARE que son las que tenemos, pero no se que tanto es necesario para agregar soporte, /u/cuerbot debe saber). Sobre tener prepagas, eso existe por ejemplo en Amsterdam donde te cobran un extra por las descartables si no tenés la tarjeta de transporte. En Buenos Aires creo que si no tenés la SUBE te jodés.
> Esto con las bolsas de papel se arregla, te van pesando las cosas, la guardan en la bolsa de papel, van pegando las etiquetas.
Sigue sin tener funcionalidad el hacer una cola extra y que alguien te marque los artículos. Puede perfectamente haber una balanza de cortesía para que sepas cuanto llevás, pero lo ideal es que una vez llegás a la caja uses tu chismosa y consumiste cero bolsas de papel o nylon. Te lo acepto igual como fase intermedia.
This app can read the Bay Area equivalent of the OPUS (the Clipper card) with an Android NFC reader and display a log of your recent trips and how many fares you have left, etc. So yeah, definitely possible if the precise hardware in the OPUS is at all comparable.
OTOH, you can refill Clipper card cash balances online but there's some ridiculous latency between when your card is charged and when the balance becomes usable. So, transit authorities seem to be bad at this stuff.
Google maps was pretty reliable for us to figure out transport, especially if you don't know specific stations and just need to figure out how to get to a general area.
The last couple of days we were there they introduced some bug where station names would no longer be shown in English, but from what I've heard that has been fixed.
All other train apps I tried required specific stations, some expensive upgrade to unlock the functions I needed, or just had a horrible interface.
If you want to keep a log of things and use an IC card, I used FareBot to read out the stations we passed through from my ICOCA every evening. The card itself seems to keep a log of the past 20 scans.
Some public transit cards (like ClipperCard, ORCA) use NFC antennas (which many phones can now read). Farebot lets your phone read the card's balance and recent ride history.
If you have an Android phone with NFC, there are apps that can read the value directly by tapping the card (I use Farebot). Perhaps there's one for iOS too, idk.
Otherwise, yeah, you'd see it next time you tag, which can be when you're riding, or by checking on a Clipper machine at a BART or Caltrain station as if you were loading balance.
Do you have an Android with NFC on it? Or do you have a friend with one?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codebutler.farebot
You can check the card yourself. If the names of the stations don't appear, at least look at the amounts and the time-stamps.
> Proximity cards were introduced in London in 2012, explicitly to pay on London buses via debit/credit card. Most retailers now accept these in the EU. This feature is included with all new cards in Ireland and the UK (at least). The US has not begun to use these.
Are you talking about the Oyster card?
In San Francisco, we have had the Clipper card since 2010. And the Clipper card is actually very similar to the Oyster card.
If you have an Android phone with NFC on it, you can read many transit cards with this free app (see this thread from the original developer on reddit).
I don't know a ton about the NFC technical aspects but I'm pretty sure you could actually do both! You can already read data from your ORCA card with your phone's NFC reader (protocol is MIFARE DESFire) using an app like FareBot. So presumably the readers could talk to both cards or NFC enabled phones.
> You could if they didn't use private key encryption to verify each add-cash or add-pass to your clipper card. I'm not certain they do, but it's hard to imagine them designing a system with this large a flaw.
It does. If you have NFC in your android phone, check out Farebot and NFC taginfo or similar to see what kinds of things are stored on the card.
Can read many NFC-based transportation cards (including their logs). Clipper, Oyster, Octopus, etc.
Can read the NFC chip of most European passports.
Can program on the phone itself (AIDE and a bunch of other apps).
Can login quickly and seamlessly into different profiles depending on which PIN/fingerprint you use (some LG phones). This is useful if you have kids, multiple girlfriends, or just a friendly police officer that wants to use your phone for just a minute.
Can have seamless integration with your own phone number and Google Voice (Verizon, post-paid accounts only)
This some of what you're looking for?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codebutler.farebot
I recommend [FareBot]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codebutler.farebot&hl=en for Android. It is in English and works on transit cards from around the world.
It would be nice if they allowed the use of contactless credit cards at the faregates as does London Transport. See https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-tickets-and-oyster/pay-as-you-go/contactless-and-mobile-pay-as-you-go
Also, this Android app can read Clipper cards - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codebutler.farebot
Sorry IOS folks, no similar app for iPhones because Apple only allows certain limited developers to access the NFC functionality, while Android allows all developers to access the NFC functions.
The antenna and chip isn't super fragile. The next step in that guide just kinda crams the antenna in place:
https://learn.adafruit.com/rfid-iphone/tape-antenna
I'm not sure where you can find some, but I would definitely try this with an empty card, haha. If you use Android phones, you can test the card with FareBot.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codebutler.farebot&hl=en_US
Oh! Looks like someone over in /Seattle has done this before:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/hi3hi/has_anybody_triedsucceeded_at_removing_the_rfid/
If you have an Android phone with NFC then you can scan the card yourself using the FareBot app.
This app already reads clipper card rides and the balance, should be easy to implement it
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codebutler.farebot
Try this first https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codebutler.farebot
Let me know if it works or not