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#include<ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include<SPI.h>
#include "MFRC522.h"
#define RST_PIN D3
#define SS_PIN D4
MFRC522 mfrc522(SS_PIN, RST_PIN);

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  SPI.begin();
  mfrc522.PCD_Init();
}

void loop() {
  if ( !mfrc522.PICC_IsNewCardPresent() ) {
    delay(50);
    return;
  }

  if ( !mfrc522.PICC_ReadCardSerial() ) {
    delay(50);
    return;
  }

  Serial.print(F("Card UID: "));
  dump_byte_array(mfrc522.uid.uidByte, mfrc522.uid.size);
  Serial.println();
}

void dump_byte_array(byte *buffer, byte bufferSize) {
  for ( byte i = 0; i< bufferSize; i++ ) {
    Serial.print(buffer[i] < 0x10 ? " 0" : " ");
    Serial.print(buffer[i], HEX);
  }
}

I am able to get the unique ID of the RFID tag & card. But now the problem is that how can I send the unique ID from ESP8266 to the firebase realtime database.

The hexadecimal values that are generated are they unique? or they are something else? Because in some youtube videos I saw people using only numbers as a unique ID from RFID to distinguish between 2 cards or tags.

The wifi connection and firebase auth all are set peoperly ony the unique id number is the problem.

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The "UID" of the card is supposed to be unique. Most RFID chips also have blocks of readable/writable space, but some systems do only use the UID from the chip as the complete identifier.

It may be that you come across RFID chips that have utilized random bytes as the UID, in which case there is a chance of duplication. Depending on the number of possible cards to be used in your system, this may or may not be a big worry for you. If it is a big worry, you may want to use the actual memory on the RFID chips to store your user's ID data.

Regarding HEX versus numbers -- Hexadecimal is just one way to represent numbers. Your code:

Serial.print(buffer[i], HEX);

tells the print command to take the byte at buffer[i] and print its value in Hexadecimal format. You could replace HEX by DEC to see the base-10 (decimal) value instead. The actual bits underneath would be the same -- it's just one way to display/represent the underlying number.

One byte (8 bits) of data can be represented in decimal as the numbers 0 through 255. The same byte can be represented in Hexadecimal as 0x00 through 0xFF. ('0x' is one way to denote that what follows are hexadecimal values.) Each 'digit' in hex represents 4 bits of data (0-15 in decimal), so 2 hex digits can represent 16^2 values (256 decimal), hence 0-255 as the 1-byte range of decimal values.

(That explanation assumes un-signed types.)

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  • After converting HEX to DEC in the code I get this value 75 201 248 102. So can I transfer this value to the database and consider as a unique value? My project is for education purpose I have 9 cards and 2 tags I only want this 10 to have unique identity that's it. Commented Sep 5, 2017 at 14:59
  • You can store the value as integer, HEX, DEC, string -- the UID of the card can generally be considered unique and all you are doing is comparing if the UID that is read from the card exists in the database or not. Yes, you can consider the UID in Decimal representation to be unique for your case. Commented Sep 5, 2017 at 15:07
  • Thanks for the idea to get value in decimal it will be very for me to play with RFID now. Now I have to do is append the values in a variable and push the data to database. Thanks for giving your valuable time. Commented Sep 5, 2017 at 15:11

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