Keyport RFID tag housing sideplate

prusaprinters

I recently received my Keyport Slide key organizer which helped me organize my keys in a neat, tidy way, but I had two RFID key fobs which I also wanted to integrate in the Slide. Keyport does offer an RFID tag mounting plate + a solution for a flat/thin RFID tag that mounts on it, but as I live in Europe, I didn't really have access to the RFID insert that goes on the RFID mounting plate.Also, I wanted something thinner, so I designed this housing (using the side plate 3D model provided by Keyport on their Discord, as a template) which can encapsulate up to three of these 10mm RFID tags which I ordered from Aliexpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004711288265.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.10.36fa1802PvrLx0The total thickness of the housing is approx. 4mm, mounts to the plates from Keyport's Maker Kit with 4mm torx screws which they ship with the kit; the result is, in my opinion, great, as the faceplate is thin, slick, and you can have up to three RFID fobs integrated in your Slide (the faceplate should also work with the Keyport Pivot products).I am someone who knows next to nothing about RFID technology and does not have particularly good soldering skills either; some info I could not find on the internet (at least not explained in a way a dilettante would understand) but figured out while designing/putting together this side plate:There can be specially made RFID fobs, which are 125kHz, can seemingly be copied with one of these RFID copiers but the copies still won't work; this was the case with one of my fobs. These fobs can, however, be disassembled, the coil antenna de-soldered from the RFID chip and then CAREFULLY bent to an oval shape that will fit the housing I designed: this was the case with one of my fobs, I had some backup copies made by the company that makes these fobs, then carefully disassembled one of them, de-soldered the antenna (sounds more complicated than it is, you just need a tweezer, a simple magnifying glass and taking some care, as the antenna's wires are thin and fragile), then used a pen to bend it in the oval shape that is seen in the picture of this model (taking a closer look you'll see that I didn't do a great job, but it still works). You need to take it slow, making sure that the antenna coil won't delaminate, but if you succeed, you can just solder the antenna back to the chip and place the entire thing in the housing using some of the original mounting goo/adhesive from the fob's original housing. What I observed after I did this transformation is that you do lose some detection range due to the deforming of the antenna, but not very much (and also, I just used to slap the fob against the reader anyway, so this wasn't a big thing for my use case).What I tried before deciding to butcher/deform the fob's antenna as mentioned above, but didn't work:De-soldering the original large antenna (¬2.5-3 cm diameter) from the chip, then soldering one, then two 125kHz antennae (in various configurations) I de-soldered from the 10mm tags I ordered from Aliexpress.Simply copying my other 125kHz fob worked great though (the copy of that is the smaller tag on the picture).I also experimented with these 2mm pet chip RFID vials as they look cool: they also worked as expected, I didn't have any issues with copying the non-complicated RFID fob to the vials, but given their small size, it was a hassle getting them close enough (and in the good angle) for the reader from the entrance of my apartment complex to detect them (even when using 2-4 of them), this is why I ultimately settled with re-shaping the fob the couldn't be simply copied and with the 10mm RFID tag for the other fob.I printed the bottom of the housing from black PLA (0.2mm layer height, standard settings) and the top/cap of the housing from transparent PETG (also 0.2 mm layer height, standard settings). The two halves snap together nicely and are held on securely on the Maker plate by 4 screws, but I glued them together with transparent epoxy for good measure.I hope this will be useful to some people out there :)