Chhavi ESP32 based fingerprint and NFC tag reader compatibility with ESPHome and Home Assistant Tags? (Crowdfunding campaign product on on Crowd Supply)

Hardware
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Do you think the NFC tag reader can run ESPHome on this "Chhavi ESP32-based fingerprint sensor with optional NFC and that it can then be made to work with the Home Assistant Tags and Tag Reader for Home Assistant projects?

Vicharak has just launched this “Chhavi” ESP32 based fingerprint and NFC reader product as a crowdfunding campaign on Crowd Supply.

“Chhavi is a compact, wireless, touch-capacitive fingerprint sensor based on ESP32 WiFi and Bluetooth SoC that is offered with optional NFC connectivity and a battery.”

It says that it can also optionally be powered by a battery.

Not cheap but it have to say that its very compact size makes it looks very nice. BTW, I first read about it on CNX-Software blog:

FPC BM-Lite fingerprint sensor module by Fingerprints

https://www.fingerprints.com/technology/hardware/modules/fpc-bm-lite/

https://www.fingerprints.com/solutions/access/bm-lite-development-kit/

NXP PN7150 NFC controller

https://www.nxp.com/products/rfid-nfc/nfc-hf/nfc-readers/high-performance-nfc-controller-with-integrated-firmware-for-smart-devices:PN7150

https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/PN7150.pdf

NFC Specifications & RF Protocols

  • PN7150 NFC controller
  • NFCIP-1 ¹ & NFCIP-2 ²
  • ISO/IEC 14443A, ISO/IEC 14443B PICC, and NFC Forum T4T modes via host interface ³
  • NFC Forum T3T via host interface
  • ISO/IEC 14443A, ISO/IEC 14443B PCD designed according to NFC Forum digital protocol T4T platform and ISO-DEP ⁴
  • FeliCa PCD mode
  • MIFARE Classic PCD encryption mechanism (MIFARE Classic 1K/4K)
  • NFC Forum tag 1 to 5 (MIFARE Ultralight, Jewel, Open FeliCa tag, MIFARE DESFire) ¹
  • ISO/IEC 15693/ICODE VCD mode ⁵
  • Supports card emulation as well as reader mode

¹ ISO/IEC 18092 (NFCIP-1) edition, 2013-03-15. This is similar to Ecma 340
² ISO/IEC 15693 part 2: 2nd edition (2006-12-15), part 3: 1st edition (2001-04-01)
³ ISO/IEC 14443 parts 2: 2001 COR 1 2007 (2007-11-01), part 3: 2001 COR 1 2006 (2006-09-01) and part 4: 2nd edition 2008 (2008-07-15)
⁴ NFC Forum Device Requirements V1.3
⁵ ISO/IEC 15693 part 2: 2nd edition (2006-12-15), part 3: 1st edition (2001-04-01)

PS: I’m just a fan and have no affiliations or connections with Chhavi and Crowd Supply or any others.

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Why don’t you ask the developers?

3

I now asked he question to Vicharak about Chhavi compatibility with ESPHome via Crowd Supply here:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/vicharak/chhavi/ask-question

and posted question about ESP32 and that PN7150 NFC tag reader to adonno’s tagreader project here:

https://github.com/adonno/tagreader/issues/134

Guess would probably not hut if others asked the same question to those places to show their interest.

4

Akshar here, creator for Chhavi and also a team Vicharak.

We are thinking of developing open source support for home assistant and chhavi.

Any suggestions would be helpful

1 Like
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As I suggested in https://github.com/adonno/tagreader/issues/134

Believe there could also be a market for a small ready-to-use NFC tag reader-only if ship in a nice case.

As mentioned, upstream ESPHome project does support ESP32 but no native NFC reader support yet:

So I guess the first step would be to get support for that NXP PN7150 NFC controller into ESPHome:

https://esphome.io

https://github.com/esphome/esphome

See examples

https://github.com/adonno/tagreader

and

https://esphome.io/components/fingerprint_grow.html

Noticed by the way that you also posted a new discussion about the ESPHome project on GitHub:

https://github.com/esphome/esphome/discussions/2464

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@akshar001 Maybe off-topic but consider switch to less expensive WCH CH340B USB-to-UART chip:

http://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH340.html

CH340B integrate EEPROM for configuring the identidier and serial number, etc. (similar to CP2102).

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The cost different was much, but the problem was size we didn’t want to go for 6 layer cause of cost cutting, and also need to adjust everything into this tiny thing.

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FYI, another related thing is that Home Assistant recently added support for USB-discovery which now allows integrations for Home Assistant to automatically detect devices if they are using a USB-adapters.

For that to work the USB-to-serial bridge chip that has been configured with a unique description/identifier, (note that you should not change VID or PID, instead just the description/identifier and maybe also the serial number).

So if you configure either the CP2102 (or CH340B) USB-to UART converter with its programable EEPROM configured with a custom description/identifier then third-party developers could in the future make their integrations in Home Assistant (or other applications) automatically discover your fingerprint-reader and/or NFC-reader as USB device if plug-in via a USB-cable to simplify end-users adding it as they get a pop-up notification if any integration has whitelisted your device(s) in Home Assistant.

Check out these related posts:

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2021/09/01/release-20219/#usb-discovery

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/usb/

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/community-help-wanted-to-whitelist-all-compatible-zigbee-and-z-wave-usb-adapters-for-automatic-discovery-in-home-assistant-os/344412

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Aren’t these NFC devices? RDM6300 NFC/RFID — ESPHome and PN532 NFC/RFID — ESPHome

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@Hedda We have integrated home assistant NFC with Chhavi, i will send a github repo soon,

We also are planning to integrate it with fingerprint sensor.

1 Like