So, I have been looking for a day or two now, and all the information I find is old and isn't working (since I am posting here haha). Anyways, so I bought the SM130 RFID board with the evaluation board. I have the eval board hooked up to Arduino using header pins and some other little things I made (the other things are so I can have LEDs that represent ON, TX and RX that I can no longer see the the eval board ontop of the Arduino).
Anyways, my problem is when you buy the SM130 board from SparkFun I guess it comes with a firmware that uses UART and the RFIDuino library that I'm using is built on the I2C protocol. So I need to update the firmware, which in theory should be easy since SonMicro makes a Windows utility for it that is basically just point and click. I have the utlility, but every time I try it, I get a Com Port Close and Timeout. No Response. error. I am using Com1 for the Arduino (which works fine in the Arduino program, I can read/write to/from the board) and am using the BaudRate 9600 which I have verified is correct in the Device Manager.
I have tried it without the Arduino program open, I've tried it with the program open, and a bunch of other stuff but absolutely nothing I try makes it better. Occasionally I make it worse, but that is besides the point.
So, I have a little bit of an update. I have been trying to get various things to work and have been researching my issue. I contacted SonMicro and had them send me their I2C firmware so I am positive I have the correct one now. And I also found a guy who made a Python script so you could upgrade without using Windows. Originally I tried running the script on Windows but I installed Python 3.3 and it wasn't working so I booted up Linux and tried it there. And lo and behold it actually runs.
However, my problem is that it gets stuck on "Enabling update mode." which would explain why I was getting a timeout before. Here is the script.
And I think I forgot to mention this in my previous post, but here is the way everything is wired up (oh, and I'm using a chipless Arduino as numerous articles online said to do).
Have you managed to get this to work? I am having the same issue (timeout) and can't find any helpful information anywhere else. I contacted sonmicro. They sent me the firmware, but didn't give me any hints on how to fix the issue.
If you (or anyone else) has come across the solution, I'd be really grateful if you could share it.