Wireless/Contactless/Remote Magnetic Stripe Reader

[Sonia0]

Hi,

I am wondering who could I contact to manufacture (develop) for me Wireless/Contactless/Remote Magnetic Stripe Reader with as high as possible range (quantity of meters) for operating successfully? I am NOT referring to RFID technology.

Any suggestion who to contact would be highly appreciated.

[Wirehead]

What's the end-goal?

Presence detection of people? Or checking if a certain equipment stock is still available in a certain room?

[Ian.M]

A magnetic stripe encodes data as up to three linear spatial array of magnetic dipoles.  As dipole magnetic fields follow an inverse cube law with distance, and the length of an individual dipole on the stripe is a small fraction of a millimetre, it will be difficult to even detect the presence of the card at a distance of several meters let alone detect the ripples in the total field with enough resolution to recover the data.   If one had a sufficiently fine-pitched array of very many SQUID detectors  surrounding the card at a moderate distance, in a location totally shielded from external magnetic fields + many hours of supercomputer run time for signal analysis, it might be possible to read a stripe card remotely without a read head in contact with or close proximity to the stripe. 

Otherwise - not a snowflake's chance in hell.  The signal you would be looking for would be many orders of magnitude down below the ambient magnetic 'noise' floor, especially in industrialised countries.

[Sonia0]

Actually I found one such wireless item for magnetic stripe but it is operating in completely opposite way comparing to what I want. It is operating in a way that the item is put close to credit/debit/prepaid cards POS (wireless or wired) terminal and then the terminal reads the magnetic stripe with no contact at all. I heard that the item is just doing some kind of electromagnetic field in its close environment and that field can be read by POS. I don't want that.

What I search for doesn't have much to do with POS at all, not even with ATM. I am looking to hire electronic developer who could make device in a way that i put it close (how close would be discussed with developer) to the card regardless in what position the card is, even if back side is placed on the table, and then the device could remotely read that particular magnetic stripe for track 1 and track 2.

Now imagine the warehouse: One box either for departure or for arrival (new material) has one card attached. Another box has another card attached and so on. All the data of magnetic stripes are in the database but reading every single card (reading the magnetic stripe) of each and every box can be time consuming. It would be better if employee simply walks around those boxes, the data from magnetic stripe cards (one card per one box) would be saved into the device. Once done, device can be connected to computer and data from magnetic stripes can be instantly compared with the database. If NOT missing, this means the order (different quantity of boxes) for particular can be shipped to the customer - it is ready. If missing, the required order is not yet manufactured and we can investigate further with manufacturing department where are packages stopped. They can track the order, see what products are being manufactured for this order, see what kind of manufacturing phases are required and can go to particular machines or wherever items are.

Ian.M I apologize but I have no idea what are you talking about. Would appreciate that you explain in nontechnical/nonelectronic way but kindly keep in mind that from magnetic stripes I would need gathered/collected remotely track 1 and track 2. I had to repeat that so wrong data wouldn't be collected.

[edavid]

Ian.M I apologize but I have no idea what are you talking about. Would appreciate that you explain in nontechnical/nonelectronic way but kindly keep in mind that from magnetic stripes I would need gathered/collected remotely track 1 and track 2. I had to repeat that so wrong data wouldn't be collected.

He's just telling you it's impossible.

Think about it - if it were possible to read magstripes remotely, we would have all had our credit card numbers stolen years ago.

[Sonia0]

Think about it - if it were possible to read magstripes remotely, we would have all had our credit card numbers stolen years ago.

everything is possible. Developers created a rocket to fly without a human on the moon. So how it wouldn't be possible what I need? Since YOU mentioned credit cards, See:

[Wirehead]

Actually I found one such wireless item for magnetic stripe but it is operating in completely opposite way comparing to what I want. It is operating in a way that the item is put close to credit/debit/prepaid cards POS (wireless or wired) terminal and then the terminal reads the magnetic stripe with no contact at all. I heard that the item is just doing some kind of electromagnetic field in its close environment and that field can be read by POS. I don't want that.

What I search for doesn't have much to do with POS at all, not even with ATM. I am looking to hire electronic developer who could make device in a way that i put it close (how close would be discussed with developer) to the card regardless in what position the card is, even if back side is placed on the table, and then the device could remotely read that particular magnetic stripe for track 1 and track 2.

Now imagine the warehouse: One box either for departure or for arrival (new material) has one card attached. Another box has another card attached and so on. All the data of magnetic stripes are in the database but reading every single card (reading the magnetic stripe) of each and every box can be time consuming. It would be better if employee simply walks around those boxes, the data from magnetic stripe cards (one card per one box) would be saved into the device. Once done, device can be connected to computer and data from magnetic stripes can be instantly compared with the database. If NOT missing, this means the order (different quantity of boxes) for particular can be shipped to the customer - it is ready. If missing, the required order is not yet manufactured and we can investigate further with manufacturing department where are packages stopped. They can track the order, see what products are being manufactured for this order, see what kind of manufacturing phases are required and can go to particular machines or wherever items are.

Ian.M I apologize but I have no idea what are you talking about. Would appreciate that you explain in nontechnical/nonelectronic way but kindly keep in mind that from magnetic stripes I would need gathered/collected remotely track 1 and track 2. I had to repeat that so wrong data wouldn't be collected.

This is exactly what RFID was made for. You could scale up the range of a commercial RFID system pretty easy. But magnetized cards, and reading those 2 tracks from such a distance, is impractical, or as someone stated, impossible. Put RFID tags on your goods, have clear in/outs into your warehouse. You'll have a perfect view of what's in the warehouse.

[Sonia0]

edavid: one more thing I want to add to my previous message, you were too sure its not possible. How do you think this would work then:  http://cardreaderfactory.com/msrv011.html

For me the problem is this shown item is not just the price but, along price, also Bluetooth requirement. This means either smartphone or laptop would need to be near device. I don't like this. It should be stored on similar card as it goes to camera.

Wirehead: the cards are not RFID.

[edavid]

edavid: one more thing I want to add to my previous message, you were too sure its not possible. How do you think this would work then:  http://cardreaderfactory.com/msrv011.html

That is a normal reader (head in contact with card) with a Bluetooth interface.

You said you wanted a contactless card reader.

Totally different.

[Sonia0]

yes i would need contactless/remote one but don't know which developer to contact.

[2N3055]

Few things:

1. You cannot make a reader that will read magnetic stripe of a card at ANY distance.. Even few millimeters are too much. Magnetic card readers keep reading head in contact with card.. Magnetic field is very weak.
2. If there was a way to make it using Harry Potter technology, it would be illegal..
3. If one existed, there wouldn't be ANY legal reason to posses or use one...

So basically, what I'm saying, if you want a skimmer, you will have to buy it from criminals....

And no, it cannot be done.. If anybody, anybody, tells you otherwise, they have no clue or lie to you deliberately..

[Bud]

@Op  you just made it up, the story with emoloyee walking around in the warehouse, didn't you. Noone does this type of inventory management. People use barcodes for that, ever heard of it?

Edit: the video does not prove anything

[Sonia0]

So I assume something like this https://samy.pl/magspoof/ developed in a reverse way wouldn't be possible either.

[edavid]

When you try to READ a card remotely, you have to be able to focus your magnetic beam in order to read individual dots, plus you have to amplify the insanely weak signal.

Is it actually possible to "focus your magnetic beam"?  I've never heard of anything like that.

(Even if you could, I'm pretty sure the SNR would be too low to read the flipped stripe from any distance, but I'm curious about the beam part.)

[edavid]

Theoretically you can focus a very high frequency, maybe tens or more GHz of milliwave by using a phase controlled array antenna, then focus small amount of probing energy to a magnetic dot, then read scattered reflection signal. Magnetized and non-magnetized material reacts differently to EM wave, so theoretically it is viable.

OK, then it's not a "magnetic beam", it's RF.

What physical effect would you use to read the polarity of the magnetic stripe?

This focus probing energy and read scattered signal method is also used in scanning electron microscopes.

Does the scattered energy from the magnetic stripe vary with the magnetic polarity?  If not, I don't see the connection.

[xygor]

Put magnetic developer on the stripe and read it optically.

[edavid]

Put magnetic developer on the stripe and read it optically.

I like that... all you need is a squirt gun and a camera 

[Sonia0]

xygor: You have misunderstood. I had known before I created this topic that I won't be able to understand those technical terms. Therefore was asking who could I contact, particular electronic developer, that could produce such reader for me for a fee.

Members on this forum probably have experiences in hiring electronic gurus, not ''just'' developing devices on their/your own so I was hoping someone could please direct me to the correct company or individual person.

Although your ideas might be useful too as I may just pass them and they/he will understand the technical meaning behind.

[Bud]

There was a wifi skimmer hooked up to the atm card reader in the video, so a vanilla access point device in the car was used to receive the data. It has nothing to do with  straight remote mag stripe reading.

Edit: @OP we all know what you are after, do not waste your time, plus you are on a wrong forum.

[Ian.M]

If it was practical, no form of unencrypted magnetic media would ever be secure.  e.g. if you can read a magnetic stripe card from tens of meters  away, you can also read a powered off hard drive from a few tens of cm away.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(magnetic_field)
You've got nine orders of magnitude between the strength of the field at a tape (or stripe) read head and what a good SQUID magnetometer can detect fairly quickly.   As a dipole field follows an inverse cube law with respect to distance, theoretically at least, a scanning SQUID detector could read the stripe 1000 times further away than a normal read head.   However a conventional read head must be in the near field of the stripe, and at 210 bits/inch, that's no more than a few tenths of a mm away, so if you throw a few $10 millions at the problem, you can probably develop a device that can guess the most likely bit pattern on a magnetic stripe card, contact free with a range of the order of tens of cm.   It will require a magnetic field free (shielded) room, a large array of cryogenically cooled SQUID detectors (at least a half hemisphere round the card) and a supercomputer to iteratively solve the problem of what bit pattern generated the measured field ripples

[xygor]

@Ian.M So what you're saying is that this is or soon will be a kickstarter or indiegogo project?

[Ian.M]

No, but only because I don't think kickstarter or indiegogo's target demographics have a high enough percentage of crooks and three letter agency senior staff.