Key Features:
- Most popular NFC chip
- Read and write to tags and cards and communicate with phones
- No embedded NFC work required
- Onboard power LED, 3.3V regulator and an FTDI header so you can plug in an FTDI friend
The PN532 is the most popular NFC chip, and is what is embedded in pretty much every phone or device that does NFC. It can pretty much do it all, such as read and write to tags and cards, communicate with phones (say for payment processing), and 'act' like a NFC tag.
NFC (Near Field Communications) is a way for two devices very close to each other to communicate. Sort of like a very short range bluetooth that doesn't require authentication. It is an extension of RFID, so anything you can do with RFID you can do with NFC. You can do more stuff with NFC as well, such as communicate bi-directionally with cell phones. Because it can read and write tags, you canuse this for RFID-tag projects. It can also work with any other NFC/RFID Type 1 thru 4 tag (and of course all the other NXP MiFare type tags) The PN532 is also very flexible, you can use 3.3V TTL UART at any baud rate, I2C or SPI to communicate with it. This chip is also strongly supported by libnfc, simply plug in an FTDI cable and use the FTDI serial port device to communicate - this lets you do NFC dev using any Linux/Mac/Windows computer!
Item Specifics
PN532 breakout board
Tuned 13.56MHz stripline antenna
0.1" header
2 jumpers/shunts
4050 level shifter chip
Plus -- Mifare Classic 1K card
