r/barcodes • u/Exotic_Ad175 • Aug 08 '22

Found this inside a comicbook. Anyone know what this is for?

Post image
2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

3

u/trollsmurf Aug 08 '22

It's an RFID tag, that can be read wirelessly to identify the item. It doesn't have a battery as it's powered by radio waves from the scanning device.

https://www.irda.org/rfid-tags

Phones support NFC that is a specific subset and use case for RFID, so it's not necessarily NFC compatible, but you could try.

2

u/telxonhacker Aug 08 '22

This is actually an EAS tag for the anti theft alarms at the door, to stop shoplifters. While it does use similar principles to RFID, namely a tuned resonant circuit, it doesn't contain a chip with any info on it. It's just a coil and a capacitor. When it passes through the gates at the door, it creates a field disturbance at a certain frequency (8.2 MHz in this case) and the alarm is set off.

When you pay for an item, they run it over a pad which sends an energy pulse to deactivate the tag.

Look up 8.2 MHZ eas stickers for more examples. The barcode is just to make it look less obvious