According to Mobilemag, and picked up by Gizmodo, a company called Telecom Korea has started embedding RFID tags into casino chips, giving them a read range of 3m. That's all very well, but their claim that they're the first to do it is bunk!Las Vegas casinos have been doing it for years. If the Korean chips read up to 3m then they must be UHF, whereas the Vegas ones are HF, based on the ISO15693 standard, and can read about 50cm.
It's surprising that anyone would want a casino chip to be broadcasting up to 3m in the first place. The way it works in Vegas is that the chips are read when they're on the table, and also when being issued or sorted. The benefits are quicker counting, detection of counterfeit chips, and defense against quick fingers on the table.
None of that is compatible with a 3m read range, which would make it impossible to tell what's on the table and what's in the bank. Sure you could turn down the reader power but randomly energized chips would still transmit for up to 3m. Not to mention that anyone with a handheld reader could now tell how much you were carrying with a wave of the wand.
The curious thing is that UHF is a regulated spectrum, HF is not. Does it make sense to go to all the trouble of getting frequency approval for the chips and readers when you can already buy HF solutions on the market?
Macau is the fastest growing casino town in the world right now. I guess we can watch and see how it plays out there.
Re: Gizmodo
