Are you ready for another British invasion? First there was, well, that actual invasion by Britain. Then there was the musical one led by those wily upstarts the Beatles. Now there’s a tech-invasion. The UK is not usually known for being in the cutting edge of technology so it pleases us to announce that in one field they put on a jolly good show. RFID chip design. You know those little chips embedded in things like credit cards to make it easier to pay for things and access services? That kind of thing is immensely popular across the pond, especially to access their public transit system.
As such, one proper English gentleman named Dhani Sutanto has taken it upon himself to use RFID technology to make accessing the Tube subway system easier than ever. He has retrofitted the tech to a common ring. It’s called the Oyster Ring after the name of the card that bears the chip, the Oyster Card. As long as you are wearing the ring, and the chip has money on it, you can come and go as you please all throughout London. No muss, no fuss. Now you’ll never have any fear of misplacing your subway card, unless you lose a finger in a horrible pork’n’beans factory accident. That would smart.
Guess what? You can’t buy this. It’s actually technically illegal to hack the Oyster Cards. Tons of people do it anyways so don’t worry if you find yourself in London with a hankering to get a little dubious. If you feel like making one, the designer has posted detailed instructions right here. And, yeah, we are really proud we went this entire post without one bad Austin Powers reference. Yeah baby.
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