Saturday, April 16, 2005

Turning your mobile into a magnetic stripe reader

Turning your mobile into a magnetic stripe reader: "Exploring my new Siemens MC 60 mobile I discovered an interesting feature. It has the ability to record small pieces of sound with its integrated microphone and store them as WAV files, so that you can use them later as personalized ring tones, etc. This suggests that the MC60 has a builtin ADC just the same as computer soundcards have. In fact every mobile must have an ADC to send voice because transmission is digital, not like in traditional analog cable telephones, but simply the ADC is not accessible to users, it is transparently used during communication.

The recording feature made me think that I might use the mobile as a magnetic stripe reader, just like I did with computers with soundcard. After some tests I had successful results, so here is the process in case you are interested in doing the same. I only did it with the Siemens MC60, but there are a lot of chances that it can be repeated with other mobiles of similar features.In order to use your mobile as a magnetic stripe reader it must comply with certain requisites, but even those might not be sufficient, only experience will tell you"

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