Richard Schmidmaier: "With the 'NTAG I²C plus kit for Arduino pinout', we are providing developers with a developer kit that considerably simplifies the development of NFC applications."

© NXP Semiconductors

Mr. Schmidmaier, why is NFC technology interesting for use in industrial applications?

Schmidmaier: NFC is now built into more than 1.5 billion smartphones and is suitable as a communication interface over short distances of up to ten centimetres. As soon as you equip an industrial assembly or device with NFC, you can use an NFC smartphone as an external user interface. This opens up many possibilities

What are the possibilities?

Schmidmaier: For example, users can use an NFC smartphone to parameterize the device. Instead of one or more DIP switches on the device, they set the parameters in the smartphone app and briefly touch the device once with the NFC phone - and the parameters are saved in the module. This is even possible without a power supply, as the NFC module in the assembly receives its energy from the smartphone's NFC field during the write process.

Users can also use the NFC phone to read data from the device without power - this can include error codes, usage statistics, operating hours counters, firmware versions, serial numbers and much more. This saves users service UARTS. Even firmware updates via NFC are possible, as the MCU can be powered from the NFC field during flashing via energy harvesting.

Another advantage of NFC is that housings can be designed to be water-, dust- and chemical-proof - the NFC signal penetrates plastic and glass without any problems. Compared to electromechanical solutions, money can even be saved, as a chip such as the 'NTAG I²C plus' from NXP Semiconductors costs less than a typical 8-bit DIP switch, and that with a memory capacity of 2 kBytes.

What will NXP be showing at SPS IPC Drives 2017 with regard to NFC?

Schmidmaier: Our latest development kit 'NTAG I²C plus kit for Arduino pinout' can be plugged directly onto any Arduino-compatible MCU development board, such as the 'Kinetis Freedom Boards'. This simplifies the development of NFC applications with the 'NTAG I²C plus' and thus saves the developer time and effort.

Are there other developer kits?

Schmidmaier: Yes, we also offer the 'NTAG I²C plus Explorer Kit', which is very suitable for demonstrating the various possibilities with NFC. It contains an LCD, a microcontroller, LED, temperature sensor and three buttons. With an NFC-enabled Android smartphone, users can write a text on the display or read out the temperature and the buttons. Thanks to energy harvesting, this works without an additional power supply for the kit.

The third option is the 'NTAG I²C plus Explorer Kit with NFC Reader', which is ideal if the developer is unable to use an Android smartphone thanks to the additional NFC reader.

Is NFC already being used in industrial products?

Schmidmaier: The range of applications is very wide and NFC is being used in more and more industrial products. For example, in the 'Zelio NFC Timer Relay' from Schneider, which is configured entirely via NFC and thus implements 28 different functions with one piece of hardware. With timer accuracies of 10 ms, it is 50 times more accurate than conventional potentiometer solutions. Another example is the 'Quint Power' power supply from Phoenix Contact, which uses an NFC smartphone and the appropriate app to define alarm thresholds for preventive function monitoring, set the output voltage and adapt the output characteristic curve specifically to the requirements of a system.

And thirdly, the 'Mini Analog Pro' isolating amplifier, also from Phoenix Contact. Using an NFC smartphone, the user can set signal ranges, sampling rates, user-specific characteristics and device labels. In addition, measured values can be viewed and the complete digital device documentation - with a server connection for up-to-date documents - can be accessed.