Hardware - NFC-dongle

The PN531 and PN533 chips support direct USB communication. This makes it very convenient and cheap to build NFC readers. No micro-controller is necessary to handle USB frames and no driver development is required. It is feasible to construct a NFC/RFID reader of the size of a ordinary USB-dongle. It only needs one chip and a mini antenna. Example products are SCL3710 and SCL3710 (pictures on the left) from SCM Microsystems.

libnfc supports direct USB communication for the PN53x chips by making use of libusb.

A list of compatible NFC-dongles can be found on the compatibility page.