Contactless NFC reader in more than 1,000 buses – Pozarevac's Digital Logic looking for strategic partner in perfecting unique device

The eKapija portal has opened the contest for the best investment in 2016 – Aurea 2017, and, in expectation of new winners, we've visited the companies shortlisted for last year's award in order to see how far they've come in developing their business.

The Pozarevac-based company Digital Logic, last year's finalist, celebrated 50 years of successful operations in the field of electronic systems in November 2016.

Their participation in Aurea 2016 had been secured thanks to the development of a contactless reader, one of the very few such devices in the world at the time. The multifunctional contactless reader, meant for reading 2DQR codes, NFC cards and tags, as well as NFC phones, is already being implemented in bus stations and pools in Serbia, and Digital Logic experts are still perfecting it.

– There are more than 1,000 buses using our equipment at the moment, and further development will make selling paper tickets cheaper and enable the validation of cards sold online. We will need a strategic partner for this, such as a GSM provider. Unfortunately, the device has not yet been put in a foreign market, but once the new changes, which now exist as prototypes, have been implemented, we are looking at certification and then sales abroad as well – the Pozarevac company says for eKapija.

As they explain, the readers are being upgraded by switching to more up-to-date microcontrollers with higher processing speed and a TCP/IP Stack. Higher speed enables quicker reading of QR codes, and at higher resolution as well, whereas the TCP/IP Stack and the web server provide a greater degree of autonomy, as a computer is no longer needed for the multifunctional device to work. Thanks to this, as they point out, they hope for an increase in the production and the sales of this device.

Let us remind that the first NFC 2DQR barcode reader prototype was successfully tested in 2015 as part of the ticket sale and pool access control system, as well as in systems for the electronic sale of public transport tickets. The devices can be implemented wherever there's need for access control or keeping attendance records: in museums, concert halls, sports facilities, sports and recreation centers, bus and railway stations, and the reader also won the special Discobolus prize last year.

New reader capable of running for 10 years without electricity or cables

In 2016, Digital Logic tested the new device TWR (Total Wireless Reader). This revolutionary product will be able to work for ten years without electricity and without a single cable. This NFC reader sticks to glass or a door and enables mobile phone and card users to log in, which is transferred wirelessly to the desired server.

The new devices were sent for testing abroad last year and the company has received feedback as to what needs to be improved.

– We need to modify this device so that it can use standard-proportion batteries, instead of the special lithium ones. The reason for this change is that batteries with a duration of over 10 years can be found in supermarkets today, which enables users to put or change the batteries by themselves. This would also simplify the export procedures, as the air transport of batteries complicates the customs procedures – they explain at Digital Logic.

The Pozarevac-based company also plans to present the new series of NFC devices with a SAM module and an RF booster in 2017. They also plan to implement the BT Low Power technology in their devices and to develop an RPi-based 7-inch NFC device, enabling easy programming in various code languages, as well as on various platforms, as RPi supports Linux, Android and Windows 10.

S.S.

Bus Logic doo Požarevac

eKapija.com Beograd