NTAG I²C Sector Select on PN532

[danielkiefhaber]

Hi all,

I'm trying to read out the session registers from an NTAG I²C. I'm using a PN532 board that I'm interfacing from an Arduino via SPI and have some trouble sending a SECTOR SELECT command.

First question: Is the PN532 capable of interfacing with NTAG I²C? If not, which reader IC is capable of doing this?

According to the NTAG I²C data sheet, I need to send 0xC2 FF, which will then be answered by a 4 bit ACK, then I need to send the sector number in the next command.

If I use the InCommunicateThru, what I get as reply to the first command is a CRC error and no message. I guess this makes sense in a way, as the ACK is sent without CRC added to it and the PN532 chip expects a CRC at the end.

Is there a method to disable the CRC checking? Or any other way to do a sector select on an NTAG I²C? The documentation of the PN532 IC is rather sparse, I was hoping that the components are all compatible given that they are all produced by NXP...

I really hope someone can help me with this. Thanks in advance!

Daniel

[Jorge_Gonzalez · Accepted solution]

Hello Daniel Kiefhaber:

Thank you for using the NFC community. We are sorry for the time with no response.

You are right that the native firmware in the PN532 is expecting a CRC within the received frame. The SECTOR_SELECT command is a NFC Forum command which is not known by the PN532.

However the error response should not interfere with the actual command. I made some tests with a 2K NTAG I2C and the SECTOR_SELECT command works as expected, as well as the READ and WRITE commands (the WRITE command does not return CRC either).

You can try from your side and confirm that the NTAG I2C actually responds well to the commands even if the PN532 reports errors.

I hope this helps.

Best Regards!,
Jorge Gonzalez

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[danielkiefhaber]

Hello Jorge,

thank you for the reply.

In fact, I decided to go with the MFRC522 for my NFC reader, which has the low-level access that I need and allowed for straightforward implementation of the Sector Select command.

You may be right regarding the PN532, although I do not have the hardware available right now to verify this.
I will still mark your post "correct answer", since this is the reply I was hoping for (it is just too late for my application, but maybe someone else will find it useful).

Best,

Daniel

[danielkiefhaber]

Anyone?

Is there a way to get in touch with an NXP engineer about this?