Making a game with credit card

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi everyone

I've been making a economical board game in the last months - for the sake of simplicity let's call it Monopoly.

[Similar to monopoly] there will be 3 to 5 players exchanging money between eachother and the bank. The bank has unlimited money.

I thought of making custom credit cards for each player of the game.

Is there any other project like that? The Arduino should be able to read and write onto a magnetic card. I tried to look through the internet and this forum but couldn't find something. It's either not possible or I just use the wrong search term :confused:

Thanks for your help!

2

You could use RFID tags/cards as function- or account cards,
magnetic cards are a PITA to read and write. Wireless rules!

3

Why not just use another "arduino" as the pseudo credit card.

The ESP8266 modules (for example the Wemos D1) have Wifi as standard.

...R

4

Robin2:
Why not just use another "arduino" as the pseudo credit card.

The ESP8266 modules (for example the Wemos D1) have Wifi as standard.

...R

It sound ridiculous...but actually it's not^^.

@Whandall: Which one is more accessible to use in your opinion: NFC or RFID?

5

LEt's suppose you got the equipment and wrote the software to read and write to a credit card. You are going to need some testing and verifying what you have written. Are you going to use your credit card? How many do you have that you can screw up before you get the program correct?

Get real!!!

Paul

6

Duplexo1114:
@Whandall: Which one is more accessible to use in your opinion: NFC or RFID?

I don't know how much memory NFC devices have, if any.

I would use MIFARE classic cards (1k IIRC), they are cheap,
the reader is cheap and they come in credid card format.

7

itead has cards at 50 cents and a reader for $5.50

sounds like a really neat game !

8

Thanks for all your replies. There are a lot of options now - and Ali offers them for a few bucks. Indeed magnetic cards don't seem to do the job, but "credit card-looking" is good enough.

I will take some days to think about the design and ordering the components. Then I have some weeks to wait for the components (and writing the code) :slight_smile:

I guess I 3D print some kind terminal (arduino inside), to simplify the paying process.

9

Duplexo1114:
I guess I 3D print some kind terminal (arduino inside), to simplify the paying process.

3D print the pseudo-credit-cards with space to install an SD Card ?

...R

10

Is there any reason to store any information on those "credit cards" other than the card ID itself?

Duplexo1114:
there will be 3 to 5 players exchanging money between eachother and the bank.

That's the description we really have. Do those players have to be able to exchange peer to peer, or only through a reader? In the first case you need "smart" cards that can store info, communicate with each other, have batteries, etc. In the second case a passive RFID is enough, as all the accounting is done in the reader itself.

11

wvmarle:
Is there any reason to store any information on those "credit cards" other than the card ID itself?

That's the description we really have. Do those players have to be able to exchange peer to peer, or only through a reader? In the first case you need "smart" cards that can store info, communicate with each other, have batteries, etc. In the second case a passive RFID is enough, as all the accounting is done in the reader itself.

I guess in a first version the RFID cards are used to identify each player and the actual "transfer" just happening inside the terminal. I made a flow chart today and start coding in a few days.

In a second step - if at all possible - I want to write the players score onto the last used card as a auto save in case anything happens to the terminal.