watchOS Can the Apple Watch send NFC data?

[patent10021]

Apple Watch can be used to pay for subways etc but is this a private API?

Say I want my watch to act as a QR Code. Is there a way to add data to the NFC so that someone with a device that has NFC can read my data just by scanning my watch?

 

[patent10021]

Found this, but it pertains to reading. The watch can obviously send/trigger but I guess for payments only.

iPhone has “reader mode” NFC that allows the users to passively read tags. This is what enables the shortcuts functionality. Reader mode isn’t a known feature of the watch and is not expected to be as Apple is unlikely to implement due to power drain.

I wonder how the NFC chip gets restricted to payment terminals. Software update? How does it know it's a payment terminal?

Answer:

Core NFC is just a limited Reader/Writer Mode sub-set. Only developers with hard to get Apple issued NFC Certificates could do more.

 

[casperes1996]

NFC features have always been a bit locked off.

There was something about it opening a bit up at one point but I never looked much into the extend of it, but I think it's all just in the CoreNFC framework.

However, if all you want is that your device can be scanned while it has an app open (and some range is OK), iBeacon could work (Bluetooth LE based). I've played around with it a tad and you can use iOS devices to transmit iBeacon signals and detect specific iBeacon signals from other iOS devices. It'll more or less just be a "You're near x now" message though, so the app would need all the logic to know what it means to be near x and not like a QR code that can have an arbitrary string encoded into it.

 

[patent10021]

Yeah, I've looked at iBeacon, MPC, vanilla Bonjour etc. None of those will do the job.

The NI Framework + MPC will do what I want though.

Thanks

 

[casperes1996]

Glad you found a solution to what you want