ECHOFORGE PRODUCT

ForgeCard V0

EchoForge's first hardware — tap an NFC card and the screen shows the EchoID behind it.

ForgeCard V0 is a local-first NFC identity kiosk: a Raspberry Pi with a PN532 reader, a 1024×600 screen, and a physical card. Tap the card and the kiosk shows that person's live EchoID — tier, role, days since joined, tagline — in seconds. It is built as two halves that agree on exactly one thing, a URL: the Pi resolves a card UID to a Cardano stake address and hands the browser /?address=<stake>; the display reads that URL and calls the EchoID API itself. Neither half knows the other's layer. V0 is complete, and the whole project is open source under Apache-2.0.

FEATURES

  • 01Tap to identity — a bound card takes the screen to that stake address's live EchoID profile: tier, role, days since joined, tagline
  • 02One contract, two halves — the Pi resolves a card UID to a stake address and hands the browser a URL; the display reads that URL and calls EchoID itself. The Pi never touches the API, the display never hears of a card
  • 03Local-first — card-to-stake-address bindings live in a JSON file on the Pi. No chain interaction anywhere in the kiosk; the stake address is only ever a lookup key
  • 04An unregistered card gets a screen, not silence — it lands on "Card Not Registered", because at a live demo a tap with no response is indistinguishable from broken hardware
  • 05No server — no backend process, no WebSocket. Every tap is a fresh page load, so there is nothing running on the Pi to crash or restart
  • 06Hardware — PN532 reader over I2C on a Raspberry Pi, 1024×600 display, Chromium fullscreen. The display is hosted separately; the Pi runs zero Node processes
  • 07EchoForgeStyle throughout — IBM Plex Mono, monochrome, glass, corner markers, sized for the kiosk screen
  • 08Open source under Apache-2.0 — the Pi-side Python, the kiosk display, and the full Raspberry Pi deployment guide

PROGRESS

  • Local binding table + UID normalization
  • Bind / lookup command-line tools
  • EchoID profile client + terminal demo
  • Kiosk display live at forgecard.echoforgellc.tech
  • ?address= URL contract — Pi and display decoupled
  • PN532 read path on the Pi — init, read loop, debounce
  • Full chain verified on hardware — tap to profile on screen
  • Open-sourced under Apache-2.0 (2026-08-05)
  • V1 — kiosk autostart and hardening
  • V1 — edge-triggered debounce, power-loss-safe writes
  • V1 — first card batch for early EchoForge users
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