Laptop logon

http://www.stashcard.com/

 

this might help you guys some.  Since its a container that fits in the pcmcia slot you might be able to modfiy it for your needs.  However i dont think there are any available pins for you to use in making your serial connections to the laptop. 

I have ripped apart an amazing amount of laptops of all sorts over my years in the IT industry and i can only imagine that the best place would be under the plastic to the left or right of the touchpad.. usually the only things that interfere in these locations would be the hdd or the battery without much fear of interfereing with the more delicate air flows around the processor that is usually located directly under the keyboard.  If I were to modify my notebook with a custom one off... i would have the reader modules in that location and then a custome antenna that fed directly under the touchpad itself.  The battery is in this location so power shouldnt be a problem to route directly off the battery.

good luck with your projects friends.

To be fair the my initial project was to re-solder the PCMCIA pins to use the USB hub in my mainboard, since I don't use it anyway (and solder a PCMCIA connector to the reader).
My computer has absolutely no space inside the casing where I can fit the Phidgets reader, so that would be the only solution.
Since this reader is a tad too large, I guess I'll be stuck untill I find a smaller usb reader that can be programmed as easily as the Phidgets.
:-(

I have considered building a small plastic casing for my phidgets reader so that I can plug it into my PCMCIA slot, but it didn't seem to me as if I could trim the board enough so that it would fit, without cutting through any printed circuits! :(

Here's an idea:  Try your PCMCIA slot.. This way, it's only getting power when the system's on, and you can probably make it portable to slide in and out... sounds like a cool project.

Yep... laptop logon works great, but there are a few issues... one is that you will drain battery life unless your RFID reader is only powered up when needed, and powered off when not. Otherwise your battery life will suffer tremendously.

You could probably take off the USB connector on the board, much like what's done in chapter 4 with the keyboard, and get some thin wire and run it to one of the laptop's USB ports motherboard solder pads. You'd have to sacrifice that port as it couldn't be used by external devices, but you'd be able to embed it.

Some laptops may also have motherboards with internal USB ports that are not wired to the outside of the case, kinda like some desktop computer motherboards have extra USB ports on them that are not connected with a dongle to the case.

As for location, many laptops have a little bit of space under the keyboard for things like very thin RFID reader boards with the USB connectors removed ;)

I've got a laptop here... a Dell Inspiron 5100... if I get some time I'll detail how to go about embedding a Phidgets RFID reader inside.