SD Card requirements

[Alec Lindsay]

So I have been using pretty inexpensive 2GB SD cards made by "Transcend." They work great in the Gen2 RFID Reader board, and are easily read by the SD slot on my Mac. But when I go to try to connect them to my iPad (using this little lightning-SD interface gem), it turns out the card doesn't appear to have any data. When I use the card in my SD slot on my Mac Powerbook, no problem - data are all there.

 

So then I tried using a different SD card (64GB SanDisk Extreme Pro) which is easily read by the iPad and the IMEEK interface adapter. I know this because I can see photos that are stored on the SD card. But when I take the SD card and put it into the Gen2 RFID reader, and test it out, nothing gets written to this card.

 

Upshot: One card can't be written to by the Gen2 RFID Reader, but can be read by my iPad. The other type of card can be written to by the Gen2 RFID Reader, but cannot be read by the iPad. Wondering if anyone has advice on a type of card - or a formatting - for a card that will solve this incompatibility?

[ebridge]

Dear Alec,

 

The RFID reader will only work with FAT-16 formatted SD cards. The 64GB card is almost certainly FAT-32, and so the RFID reader won't work with it. I know less about what is compatible with iPads. Obviously your mac is compatible with fat16 which will allow it to read smallish SD cards. It could very well be that the iPad will not read Fat16 and that's all there is to it. You could test this idea by taking one of the 2GB cards and reformatting to FAT32 (use disk utility on your mac). If the IPad comms with the reformatted card, then there's your answer. Of course that card will no longer work with the RFID reader. It might be that the lightening interface device is not FAT16 compatible, but I doubt it. You could test that by plugging it into your mac with the FAT16 card attached. 

[Alec Lindsay]

Thanks, Eli. It is the FAT-16 format that I missed. I will keep trying alternatives~appreciate the helpful tips.