Hey everybody,

I'm trying to connect my mbed to an ID12 reader on my breadboard. I purchased an ID12 reader and breakout board to accomplish this. I'm connecting the ID12 as described in the datasheet and the cookbook page. I'm also using the ID12 library code sample.

When I place an RFID tag over the reader, nothing seems to happen. When I listen directly to serial on the mbed (using getc()), not using the ID12 library, I only get a never ending stream of zeros.

I can eliminate the reader chip being defective, the breakout board being defective, and the serial port on the mbed being defective. After a lot of trying, I bought the same ID12 chip again and also ordered the Sparkfun USB adapter for the ID series. Using the USB adapter, both ID12 chips function perfectly.

I also just soldered the pin headers to the breakout board to eliminate the possibly of just having a loose connection. Still, it's not working.

Please be aware of the fact that I never really worked with microcontrollers, breadboards and all that stuff before. I've always been more of a software guy and wanted to finally change that.

I'm attaching a picture of my cabling setup (with the ID12) removed, so maybe I'm really just missing something extremely obvious, or something is really broken in my setup. I'm also happy for any hints in any direction whatsoever. Just really want this to work.

Please disregard the fact that the data cable is plugged into p10, i changed that in the code in the process of testing if maybe just p14 was faulty.

Thanks for your help.

Sven

The datasheet for the ID-12/20 is a little misleading. I just went through this issue, Follow this: http://wulfden.org/TheShoppe/freeduino/RFID_ID12.shtml.

Hope this helps if you havent already found a solution.

Hey Bill,

thanks for your response. I didn't figure it out though.

I now have connected RST to p20 and toggle its state before starting the while loop. Sadly, nothing other happens than before. I've also connected a LED to the ID-12 using a 1K resistor. It's just glowing and nothing happens when a tag comes near the reader.

Could you maybe publish some snippet of the source code you're using to successfully read a tag using the ID-12?

Thanks!
Sven