Near-field Communication, or NFC, has existed for quite some time now. We use it for payments, transferring files, tracking assets, and business cards. However, its use case in the events industry remains largely unexplored, primarily due to high cost and challenge of assigning individual tags to each person. But if we can overcome these obstacles, it can revolutionize the event experience through seamless and efficient event check-in.
When a partner agency asked if we could implement NFC Keychains as part of the registration process, we were excited and immediately said yes! Aside from check-in, these will be used as a digital passport for the activities during the event.
The Quest for Finding the Right NFC Keychains
Not all NFC tags are created equal. Our first task is to find out which tags could be read by NFC-capable phones. That’s why we purchased all kinds of commercially available NFC Tags to test them all. The results of our feasibility are kind of mixed; we learned that only the NTAG215 stickers work out of the box. Fortunately, we found a way for the MIFARE Classic-based keychains to be re-programmed to work with iPhone and Android devices. After determining the best tag to use, we had them customized to show the brand logo and a unique QR Code as a fallback mechanism. This ensures attendees can still access the content by scanning the QR code if their device lacks NFC functionality.
Customizing the NFC Readers
We’ve been doing registration for quite some time now and the main devices we use are tablets, unfortunately these are not NFC capable devices. So, we have two options, the first is to purchase NFC-enabled smartphones which would add cost to the projects especially because we needed 8 of these devices. The second was to develop our own NFC readers based on Arduino and integrate them into our existing tablets, which is a more cost-effective option.
We started doing research into which hardware and sensors would fit our use case and once we had a working prototype, we’ve designed an enclosure to house all the electronics inside. We further fine-tuned our prototype to be more responsive and work reliably.
Programming and Personalization of NFC Keychains
Each NFC Keychains must be assigned a unique identifier and to which an attendee is also tagged. We needed a way to program each keychain individually to have a unique link without any manual entry or input to avoid any potential errors. This unique link will serve as their way to access the event platform in which they can view the event schedule, program flow, and the map of the venue. This will also allow us on the NFC reader side to identify whose tag was read for checking them in or tagging their digital passport as visited.
Since we already had the NFC Keychains printed with a unique QR code, we created a program that will scan the that QR Code and program it to the NFC keychain itself that way we would eliminate any errors matching the value of the QR code and the keychain. Since we also had a barcode thermal printer at our disposal, we utilized that to print individual label stickers for each attendee with their name, company, and a corresponding QR code that contains the same data. We developed another program that will scan the QR code on the keychain and on the label sticker before we put it in the envelope and seal which ensures that we’ve tag the keychain to the specific attendee.
Distribution and Future Innovations with NFC Keychains
We’re fortunate that this event has a relatively small number of attendees, and the partner agency had planned to distribute the keychains together with their event kits at the hotel rooms of the attendees. In the future, we’re looking at complementing our existing QR based pre-registration system where we’ll program and tag the NFC Keychain after we identified the user using their QR Code.
See it in Action!
NFC Technology: The Future of Event Registration
We’ve been exploring ways to make events memorable through technology. One possibility is using NFC or RFID to track foot traffic at events. This can give us insights into attendee behavior, particularly identifying the most visited booths, facilitating networking through business card exchange, and seamless payment transactions.
At Prism Code Philippines, innovation is at the heart of what we do. We keep looking for ways to incorporate emerging technologies such as RFID, NFC, Facial Recognition, and Artificial Intelligence in the events industry.
If you’re ready to take your event to the next level, let’s work together to make your vision a reality.
