Smart Card Programmers and SIM Editors

Smart Card Programmers

Smart card programmers are used to read and program all types of electronic based cards including smart cards, Phoenix cards,SmartMmouse and SIM cards. The best ones have two types of slot to accept different card sizes and come with software to read and write all card types.

Smart cards are often ISO-7816-1 based. This standard defines the size, material and location of the integrated circuits on the card. Simple smart cards just have memory on-board but most popular cards have a microcontroller as well. The most used ones are PIC based Gold and Silver cards and AVR based Yellow cards. The colour is just a name as cards are nearly always white. They are used for door entry systems, membership cards, storing data, satellite receivers, TVs and many other applications. The smart card programmer is also very useful for creating backups of all sorts of cards.

Other types supported by the programmer are Phoenix and Smart Mouse versions. These also have embedded electronics but work at different frequencies, 3.579MHz for Phoenix and 6MHz for Smart Mouse. The programmer includes a frequency generator to support these frequencies and many others so it can be used to support all sorts of cards.

Although the smart card programmers are USB, they include Virtual COM port software to support third party software that enables virtually any type of card to be copied and programmed.

The programmers should also have a second slot for reading mobile phone SIM cards and other SIM/GSM cards. Editing software is supplied to allow these cards to be saved for backup, modified and reprogrammed. Mobile phone address books and SMS/Text messages can be edited and even deleted SMS/Text messages can be restored if you have deleted one by accident.

Development software is also available free of charge that allows you to modify programs, encrypt data and view lots of source code examples in C++. DLL and terminal versions of the software can be used to write applications in whatever language you like including VB and Delphi.

As well as this high level source code library, there are lots of firmware application examples available on the web, under public licence, for different applications on both PIC and AVR microcontroller based smart cards.

Smart cards and Programmers on Kanda blog