NFC Shield cannot detect NFC input

ESPHome
1

Hello all. I’ve been tackling this issue for about two weeks now and have been slowly achieving what can only be described as “random progress”.

I’m trying to make an NFC reader based on adonno’s famous guide, except I’m using a Velleman VMA211 instead of the red scanner he uses. The problem I’m facing now is that the D1 Mini detects the shield and all seems okay as the logs show:

[14:41:42][C][i2c.arduino:038]: I2C Bus:
[14:41:42][C][i2c.arduino:039]:   SDA Pin: GPIO4
[14:41:42][C][i2c.arduino:040]:   SCL Pin: GPIO5
[14:41:42][C][i2c.arduino:041]:   Frequency: 400000 Hz
[14:41:42][C][i2c.arduino:044]:   Recovery: bus successfully recovered
[14:41:42][C][template.switch:058]: Template Switch 'TagReader Buzzer Enabled'
[14:41:42][C][template.switch:058]:   Icon: 'mdi:volume-high'
[14:41:42][C][template.switch:059]:   Restore State: YES
[14:41:42][C][template.switch:060]:   Optimistic: YES
[14:41:42][C][template.switch:058]: Template Switch 'TagReader LED enabled'
[14:41:42][C][template.switch:058]:   Icon: 'mdi:alarm-light-outline'
[14:41:42][C][template.switch:059]:   Restore State: YES
[14:41:42][C][template.switch:060]:   Optimistic: YES
[14:41:42][C][esp8266_pwm:022]: ESP8266 PWM:
[14:41:42][C][esp8266_pwm:023]:   Pin: GPIO13
[14:41:42][C][esp8266_pwm:024]:   Frequency: 1000.0 Hz

However, I can’t get any NFC chip detected, and after a while I get this:

[14:44:06][W][pn532:090]: Requesting tag read failed!
[14:44:07][W][pn532:090]: Requesting tag read failed!
[14:44:08][W][pn532:090]: Requesting tag read failed!

Sometimes it outputs this message once every second, per the update time set, and sometimes it’ll take 2-3 seconds (though that might be from me messing with the jumpers). Sometimes it feels like it outputs those messages when I try to scan something, but then it either keeps going after I remove the tag, or it won’t output anything if I try again.

It also outputs this after a while:

[14:46:34][I][ota:105]: Boot seems successful, resetting boot loop counter.

I’ve set the toggle switches for I2C (or IIC as it appears on the board), that’s SET0 on H and SET1 on L, and I have jumpers on SCL and SDA only.

Any help and/or knowledge about this is appreciated. Thanks!

2

I’ve struggled with this same issue “Requesting tag read failed!” for 24 hours now. For the sake of anyone else finding this in the future - I ended up moving to SPI instead of I2C and haven’t seen an issue since.

As for “Boot seems successful, resetting boot loop counter.”
This is because you probs power cycled the device. It’s just letting you know it’s cleared the message from earlier in the boot → “[W][ota:095]: Last Boot was an unhandled reset, will proceed to safe mode in 8 restarts”

3

I’ll just answer here with my fix: I got the proper board for the project. The one I had was an NFC shield, whatever that even is. I got the same PN532 NFC reader used in adonno’s guide and it’s working flawlessly using I2C. No hassle, no nothing. Just flash the firmware onto the WiFi module and solder it to the reader, and you’re up and running