OpenBeacon Tag

Hardware


The OpenBeacon Tag consists of
 * nRF24L01 2.4GHz transceiver (1/2MBps)
 * PIC16F688 PIC14 microcontroller

Programming Work Flow
OpenBeacon Tag related firmware source may be found on our server for occasional browsing (pic16tag Firmware) and for development purposes in our git repository:

Please refer to our compiler setup instuctions

Active 2.45Ghz Proximity Tracking RFID Tag Hardware Design
See our reference deployment for more information. The active 2.45GHz RFID Proximity Tag source code can be found at /firmware/pic16/tag-proximity. You can find the BruCON 2011 Tag Encryption Key here. You can find further instructions on using our GIT source code repository here.


 * [[Media:OpenBeacon-Proximity-Tag_PCB.pdf|PCB overview and parts placement]]
 * [[Media:OpenBeacon-Proximity-Tag_SCH.pdf|Active 2.45Ghz Proximity RFID Tag schematics]]
 * [[Media:OpenBeacon-Proximity-Tag_BOM.pdf|Bill of Materials]]
 * Gerber Files for PCB production

"You can support our project by buying OpenBeacon Active RFID Tags in our RFID hardware shop."

Active 2.45Ghz Tracking-Only RFID Tag Hardware Design
Download area for schematics and layout:
 * OpenBeacon PCB and Schematics
 * OpenBeacon 25C3 Tag Gerber Files

Understanding the tag source code
That's the main loop from main.c in the tag firmware. The line where the actual packet macro is transmitted to the nRF24L01 chip is highlighted. Basically first the packet is assembled, then the CRC calculated and the data encrypted (shuffle_tx_byteorder is used to adjust byte order to achieve platform independence). As final step RFCMD_Execute triggers the transmitting process. Interesting feature ot this code is that the packet macro is prepended by a macro that adjust the transmit power on every transmission (g_MacroBeacon.rf_setup).

Links

 * Sputnik
 * CCC 2007 on Sputnik