[Muscle] contactless reader and card support under linux

[Ludovic Rousseau]

2009/2/16 Tim Harvey <tim_harvey at yahoo.com>:
> Greetings,

Hello,

> I'm trying to determine what a good choice for a USB contactless card reader
> and card may be for a project I'm working on.  The project requires that the
> reader be supported by a system running embedded linux and I'm having
> difficulty trying to understand what readers and cards may be supported and
> by what layer of software.  I've been reading over information about PC/SC
> Lite, OpenSC, OpenCT, and OCF and am still trying to grasp how they all fit
> together or compare.
>
> Is PC/SC Lite a competing framework to OpenSC+OpenCT?   If I understand
> correctly OpenCT is a driver frameworks that is compatible with both PC/SC
> Lite and OpenSC and that PC/SC Lite and OpenSC represent middleware that
> would support applications and cards?

PC/SC lite and OpenCT try to solve the same problem.

OpenSC can use any of the two.

OCF is now dead. The smart card access in Java 1.6 is now using PC/SC
directly. See JSR 268: Java Smart Card I/O API.

> In looking at the pcsc-lite CCID driver it would appear that perhaps
> contactless support does not exist for all the readers listed that are
> contactless - is this something thats not within the CCID spec or is that
> driver just not implementing all of the spec?

CCID is for contact cards only. Some contactless readers emulate a
contact card and can be used by a "normal" CCID driver. Some readers
uses proprietary commands and can't be used by a "normal" CCID driver.

Your next choice is: do you want to use a proprietary driver?

> Can anyone recommend a USB contactless reader that is supported by pcsc-lite
> or openct?

Search for contactless on the my CCID web page [1]. If the reader has
a comment "The contactless interface is not supported." then select
another reader.

I can't say for OpenCT. You should avoid this non-standard API.

>  Can anyone recommend a contactless card that is supported?

We don't even know what you want to do with your card.

> The other thing I'm trying to understand is what utils/API I would use to
> access information read from a card.  Ultimately I need to write an
> application that handles an event when a card is read and can access the
> data on the card.

You do not need any cryptography or security (PIN code)?

Bye

[1] http://pcsclite.alioth.debian.org/ccid.html

-- 
 Dr. Ludovic Rousseau