Hi All,
I would like to ask if it is feasible to use iPhone Home button with Touch ID as an fingerprint sensor?
At first it would be much smaller and cheaper.
Does anybody know about such a project? Would it be possible?
Recognising a fingerprint is quite a complex thing for a computer to do.
The Arduino-compatible fingerprint sensors like the ones made by Sparkfun (and the Chinese copies you see on eBay) contain more computing power than most Arduinos. They scan the fingerprint, process it and report what they find - the Arduino doesn't really have much to do with the process. This extra processing power is what makes them seem expensive.
I'm not sure how the one in your link works. At that price I imagine it leaves the image-processing work to the iPhone's CPU, and it's not going to be easy (even if it's possible) to make an Arduino do that. Even if it has on-board processing, it's going to be a considerable reverse-engineering job to get it working on anything other than an iPhone.
So it's probably not impossible for an adventurous/expert Arduino nerd. For the rest of us, it's probably worth paying the extra £20 for the intelligent sensor.