aroraborealis | CharlieHack

I ride the T every work day, and most weekend days, and for all that I complain about how it could be better, I love being able to do most of my getting around on trains and buses. I don't, however, love having to keep track of my Charliecard, not specifically because of it but just because I have so many little bits and pieces of life I have to carry around every day: Charliecard, phone, wallet, keys, etc. Sometimes, I'd like to be able to leave the house with, say, JUST my phone and my keys. But I always want my Charliecard with me, because, hey, I never know when I'm going to want to hop on a bus and go somewhere interesting.

Wouldn't it be nice if my phone could be my T pass? Well, I realized, there's no reason it can't be. So I tried sticking the card under the skin I had on my phone, but it turns out the card is too big and bulky and is too stiff to conform to the shape of the phone. Rats. Except! I don't need the whole card, right? Just the RFID tag and antenna. So I set out to do that.

I needed a Charliecard, a non-plastic container, and some acetone:

ETA: It's a good idea to make a note of your Charliecard number before you destroy it. I just put it in as a memo in my phone. I've never needed the number of my card before, but it would annoy me to find that suddenly I did and couldn't retrieve it!

I used way more acetone than I really needed; just enough to cover it would be plenty:

Then, I waited. I don't know why I expected this step to take a couple of hours, but within a couple of minutes, the card looked like this:

And after about 20 minutes, it looked like this:

So I swished it around and plucked out the important part:

At this point, I wanted to be sure it would still work, so I tucked it into my book and brought it along on my commute the next day. I tapped it on the fare machine as if to load it up with money, and lo and behold! It worked! So I put my July pass on it, and brought it back home to stick it under the new skin for my phone:

ETA: Thanks to

spike, I now have a photo of the finished product:

Because I just have a protective skin, rather than a case, you can tell there's something underneath, but not in a problematic way. At the point that you just have the RFID hardware, though, you could do any number of things with it, whether put it inside a skin or case for your phone, or apparently kids in London make bracelets out of it. For me, the cell phone/T pass combination is ideal. I'm so excited!

Feel free to share this around with anyone you think might find it useful for inspiring. Also, I have a lot of leftover acetone if anyone needs any ...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Just a quick note, don't forget to jot down the number of the Charlie Card before you go eating it away with acetone. You can register that number online with the MBTA and then track it and refill it online. You never have to use a fare station again. Additionally, if you lose your card, you can at least cancel your Charlie Card online so people can't leech off of you.

http://charliecard.mbta.com

This is a great point, and is, in fact, one of the steps I took but didn't mention! I'll put a note in the main post about this, thanks.

Of course, if you care about your privacy, or the secrecy of your travels, you don't want to register the card with the T. For my part, I always use cash at the kiosk and never register. Because I only put $20 on at a time, that's my maximum potential loss. (I recognize this might not work for commuters who need more than that on their cards.)

CharlieHack

charliecard.mbta.com

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