Review: An NFC reader/writer with USB-C - ACR1252U-MF

I needed to read and write NFC cards on Linux. I only buy USB-C peripherals now, so I found the brilliantly named "ACR1252U-MF" which appears to be the only USB-C reader on the market. Total cost was about £35 on eBay.

It's a cheap and light plastic box with a short USB cord. When you plug it in, there's a flashing light which can't be disabled. When it is powered up, or it detects and NFC chip, it makes this weird and scratchy beep:

On Linux, it shows up as: 072f:223b Advanced Card Systems, Ltd ACR1252 Dual Reader

To get it working, install PCSC Tools and the PCSC Daemon:

sudo apt install pcsc-tools pcscd

To start the daemon:

service pcscd start

Running pcsc_scan detected the reader as two readers - PICC and SAM

 TERMINALUsing reader plug'n play mechanism

Scanning present readers...

0: ACS ACR1252 1S CL Reader [ACR1252 Dual Reader PICC] 00 00

1: ACS ACR1252 1S CL Reader [ACR1252 Dual Reader SAM] 01 00

Putting tokens on and off the reader showed them being detected and removed.

Despite my best efforts, I was unable to get this working with libnfc.

 TXTnfc-list uses libnfc 1.8.0

No NFC device found.

For reading and writing basic NDEF tags, I used Wakdev's NFC tools, I was also able to use various Python scripts like PCSC NDEF

It also worked with a FIDO2 / HID Bridge so I could use an MFA token.

There's lots of documentation about the reader and its API as well as some official ACS Linux tools. In theory it supports firmware update - although none have been released.

It's a cheap and cheerful device. It would be nice if there were a way to stop the flashing LED and crappy buzzer.