nfc-poll(1)

💖 nfc-poll(1) 💖

okay bestie, so this is a page from libnfc's examples and it's literally the glow-up era of NFC polling, dated June 26, 2009. sit with me, we're doing this. 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

nfc-poll — poll first available NFC target. that's it, that's the whole vibe. 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

nfc-poll

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

nfc-poll is a lil utility that polls any available target — and yes we mean tags, but also NFCIP targets — using ISO14443-A, FeliCa, Jewel and ISO14443-B modulations. she's versatile, she's multi-talented, she's an icon. 👑

This tool uses the hardware polling feature if it's available (ie. PN532) or it switches back to software polling. either way she'll display the available information retrieved from the tag. no gatekeeping here. ✨

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -v — tells nfc-poll to be verbose and display detailed information about the targets shown. this includes SAK decoding and fingerprinting if available. she's giving main character energy and honestly? we love that for her. 🕵️‍♀️💅

😭 IMPORTANT 😭

ngl there are some well-know limits with this example, and you deserve to know them before you spiral:

• Even with NDO_AUTO_14443_4A enabled (default), nfc-poll can miss ATS. That due to the way the PN532 use to poll for ISO14443 type A — it will attempt to find ISO14443-4-only targets, then ISO14443-3. If your ISO14443-4 target is present when PN532 looks for ISO14443-4-only, ATS will be retrieved. But if your target enter the field during ISO14443-3, RATS will not be sent and ATS not retrieved. 💀 it's a timing thing, it's not you, it's the PN532.
• nfc-poll can show up only one card while two are in field. That's due, again, to the way the PN532 poll for targets. It will stop polling when one modulation got a result, so if you have, for example, one ISO14443-3 (eg. Mifare Ultralight) and one ISO14443-4 (eg. Mifare DESFire), it will probably return only the ISO14443-4. so if your other card is acting invisible... yeah. that's why. 🙈

fr fr, these aren't bugs, they're personality traits of the hardware. know them, love them, work around them.

🔥 BUGS 🔥

Please report any bugs on the libnfc issue tracker at: https://github.com/nfc-tools/libnfc/issues

we don't do silent suffering in this house. tell the maintainers. they want to know. 🫶

⭐ LICENCE ⭐

libnfc is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 3.

libnfc-utils and libnfc-examples are covered by the the BSD 2-Clause license.

(and yes the original says "the the", I'm not touching it, that's a historical artifact and it's iconic now 🎀)

🌈 AUTHORS 🌈

Romuald Conty <romuald@libnfc.org>

This manual page was written by Romuald Conty <romuald@libnfc.org>. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL (version 2 or later).

and that's the whole page bestie!! this one came from libnfc, and the page is dated June 26, 2009 — a true vintage moment. go poll something, you got this. 👑✨💖