Ampoule HF RFID Tags

As mentioned in my first post about RFID, I ordered ampoule tags from RFID Inc.: https://www.rfidinc.com/hf-13-56-mhz-rfid-glass-ampoule-tags. After a couple of emails with the people at RFID Inc, the order has been adjusted to the following items:

• Model HF-1575-312 Glass Ampoule RFID Tag, 12x3mm, ISO 15693 SLI memory chip SKU: 850-0073-312-04
• Model HF-1575-420-13F Glass Ampoule RFID Tag, 20x4mm, ISO 15693 NFC memory chip SKU: 850-0073-420-13F

Those ampoule tags are HF, so for a frequency of 13.56 MHz. The people at RFID Inc warmed me that those tags might not be able to work for my use case. So I decided to test the range of those tags with the two RFID readers from Velleman: VMA405 and VMA211.

Velleman VMA405 & Ampoule 850-0073-312-04

Well, this just does not work at all. I'm not clear as to why. I anticipated that the range will be minimal since it is the smaller tag, but even when putting the tag on the reader, I get nothing.

So, not successful at all!

Velleman VMA405 & Ampoule 850-0073-420-13F

I get a good read on those larger tags and it is quite consistent. It seems that it works best when holding vertically:

As we can see here, it works quite well:

Velleman VMA211 & Ampoule 850-0073-420-13F

So let's try again now with the VMA211 reader. The reason that I would need this one is that the antenna of the reader is a flat piece of circuit board that can easily be positioned under the tracks.
Note that by default, the VMA211 is configured to use the onboard antenna and not the off-board one. This is well explained in the documentation. From the same document, there are a few things to install: https://www.velleman.eu/support/downloads/?code=VMA211

• VMA211 Example
• SPI
• PN532 SPI

The VMA211 is super easy to connect as it stacks directly onto the Arduino UNO.

Conclusion & Next steps

Here's a summary of the ranges for the ampoule RFID tags 850-0073-420-13F 20x4mm at 13.56MHz:

Reader	Reading range
VMA405	10 mm
VMA211	15 mm