Arduino-based Magnetic Card Reader

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 by J.P. Armstrong Email your friend! Facebook this! Tweet this! ShareThis!ShareThis

Below we have a magnetic card reader made at the HACKMIAMI labs. It reads track 2 found on most magnetic striped cards (i.e. credit cards, drivers licenses, and student ids). Something interesting to point out, while testing the equipment with an old student ID card from a local university we found out it holds the person’s social security number on the card. The SSN use to be the student ID number. I wouldn’t be surprised if other universities did the same. The magnetic card reader was made using a Sanguino (a beefy Arduino clone), an LCD found on SparkFun, and magnetic card reader from All Electronics.

Magnetic Card Reader
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