YouTube tossed this video my way yesterday. Headline is clickbait but the video which is about RFID tags, Bambu, and developing a standard format that other manufacturers could adopt is interesting. For those unaware there is a fair amount going on behind the scenes regarding RFID
One of people in conversation is from Polar filament and some brief comments about filaments Made In America some may find interesting
Do ya mind giving a quick summary about the RFID cracking bit?
It was entirely click bait sensationalism worthy of NBR. Those two should hook up. They could call it “Bi-Polar Filament”.
Bambu RFID has not been cracked. You still can’t make tags. It’s been possible to read them for a long time, that process is faster now due to a vulnerability in the tag they are using.
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- Bambu’s proprietary RFID structure has been reverse engineered
- unable to write to the RFID chip, as the private key for the Bambu data is unknown, and will remain so
- Bambu printers are limited to only recognize Bambu RFID chips (of course)
- Polar and others are working to develop an open standard for Filament RFID, and are also reaching out to Bambu to see if there is willingness to cooperate and make this something that can be used industry-wide
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Not any more than it was last month, which is incompletely.
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Fair enough. 
agreed that it was more click-bait than breakthrough, although as a newcomer to the topic it was interesting.
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I don’t see how companies like Polar can survive in the US with overseas competition. I buy top manufacturer filament delivered for $9 to $13/kg, and that is the retail price anyone can buy it at. How is starting a filament manufacturer even viable in the US?
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I said right up front the title was clickbait.
I do think there is more knowledge than there was a month ago.
I’d suggest listening to the guy on the right, Mitch, and ignore the guy on the left
It’s always good practice to check Github dates.
I have been watching a group that is not mentioned by name in this video but that group had been idle on Github but within the last week there have been updates posted to their repositories.
Besides that it provides some insight.
I know more about RFID, why Bambu has handled RFID like they did.
The video is more about creating an RFID standard and letting the AMS read other companies standardized RFID tags rather than knowing what is on a Bambu RFID.
Last week I asked a question about a datapoint in Bambu Studio that I was thinking was a weight value.
They talk about weight in this video in EXACTLY the context I was thinking so I’m not the only one saying you could do weight in an RFID based of the slicers calculated weight of filament used.
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I suspect there is a growing market for “Made in the USA” customers with the current political climate, but I can’t be sure. Probably more for the hobbyists than print farms.
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Would you mind sharing these, if appropriate? I think it would help provide context for myself and others who come across this thread and would like to dig in some more. Thanks!
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Sure.
The group is named Bambu-Research-Group and opposed to what was stated earlier in thread, apparently they CAN now read the entire tag. They talk about that early in the video. The private key is the mystery and likely why when you send a model to the printer, it goes by way of a Bambu server. (cloud)
What they can’t do is generate a signature that the AMS recognizes.
But, if you think about it, I don’t care about “Cracking” the the Bambu RFID. I want Hatchbox or eSun or Inland to have an RFID that my Bambu Lab AMS can read and apply the temperatures and other parameters in Bambu Studio during slicing.
That’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. People have favored filaments AND filaments that Bambu does not carry
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Yes, they can READ the entire tag, but then again they have always been able to do that.
The thing they can’t do is INTERPRET the entire tag. That hasn’t changed either.
Basically, nothing has changed.
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Not sure why it gets under your skin but I’d suggest you not worry about the clickbait title, keep an open mind, watch/listen to the video and focus on what the guy on the right is saying and mostly ignore the guy on the left
Discovery of the KDF (Key Derivation Function) is new and they talk about that at about the 6 minute mark.
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It is new.
For those looking for the TLDR: Basically you can now make a fast cheap reader to read Bambu RFID tags, say $5. Before you needed a more expensive, slower reader, say $30. But you could always read them and we could always somewhat incompletely decode them. Knowing the KDF might make it possible to make something like an Android app that can read a filament tag, and that wasn’t possible before.
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I got filament from them at mrrf because it was a good deal, but the actual cardboard spool fell apart, wasting all the filament.
In that video they mention that more AMS-like machines are bound to show up in the marketplace, which I tend to aggree with. I don’t really pay attention to PRUSA because I don’t own one but didn’t they just come out with a core x-y machine? If yes, it’s because of Bambu, not some enlightened decision by PRUSA marketing. I would assume they intend to have an AMS-like device to go with it.
It would be infinitely more preferable that these AMS-like machines are capable of reading each others filament, not just their own.
At one level, being able to read Bambu RFID tags to me is “big whoop”.
I want eSun or Inland to have an rfid tag that my Bambu AMS can read and the AMS-like machines made by BIQU or PRUSA can also read.
This is just me but I don’t see the value in being able to read the RFID on a Bambu spool of filament beyond knowing their recipe for PLA for example
I’m with the guy on the right in video who sort of makes that point. What is preferable is for Bambu to loosen their lock on the AMS such that other filament companies are willing to put RFID tags on their spools that the AMS can read and if I have someone elses AMS-like feed system, it can read everyones spools and all those spools have useful info on their respective RFID
Do you have a link to where the low cost reader is documented? I watched the stream and checked out the Bambu-Research GitHub but couldn’t find much. Is it buried in a discord somewhere?
Probably yes to it being buried in a Discord.
Read the text at the bottom of the page. Pretty sure it describes.
You have RFID and you have encrypted RFID. Bambu somewhat falls towards the latter.
The low cost reader isn’t documented, just the algorithm is. I’m sure you’ll see esp32 sample projects soon more geared toward a beginner if you aren’t able to code it yourself with the information available.
The cost difference between the cheap (new development) and inexpensive (previous development) exploit is so minor you should just consider buying a PM3 and loading the existing code on it. Really there isn’t anything “new” that happened that suddenly made reading tags available to you, it’s been available for a while now. The youtube thing was just click bait fake news, for most people nothing happened, it’s a technical advance that makes embedding readers possible. But for you, what is the difference between $30 and $5? None, right?
I can’t really answer more detailed technical questions here or post code or this thread will get shut down.
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