Chamaleon Ultra RFID

ID cards - how many do I have? Too many. An official ID card, a health insurance card, a garage access card, an office card, and a card for building entry. Plus my sons’ ISIC cards. And sometimes one of us has no clue where a particular card is when we actually need it.

By accident, I came across the Chameleon Ultra - a tiny device capable of reading, cracking, writing, and emulating LF and HF RFID identification cards.

In just a few minutes after becoming at least a bit familiar with the iOS app and the concepts behind this RFID gadget, I was able to read five LF identification cards. After watching a video on how to crack MIFARE cards, I was also able to copy my sons ISICs and office cards into the device’s memory.

The device has a couple of LEDs to indicate which stored card is being emulated, and a “big” white LED to indicate that emulation is in progress. Everything is controlled by two buttons - switch stored card prev/next, emulate, show battery status - that’s all, and it’s enough. The rest is controlled and managed from an iOS or Android app on a phone.

Now I can present this small Chameleon Ultra box instead of my real ID cards to RFID readers. Good.

I bought mine on AliExpress here for 473 CZK (below 20 USD). I am not able to tell whether it is an original version or a cheaper copy, but it works just fine. It’s a cute little device with a simple purpose, and it fulfills that purpose quite well.