Testing Methodology

What we test in-house

The ProudTek lab tests the specific use cases that our customers ship into. We do not claim general-purpose accredited testing; where accreditation matters, we route to a partner test house and cite their report.

• Industrial-laundry wash durability (tunnel-washer cycles, soak, dry) on PPS / silicone / textile RFID tags.
• UHF / RAIN RFID read range at 868 MHz (EU) and 902–928 MHz (US/CA). Free-space and on-item (cardboard carton, PET bottle, cotton garment).
• HF / NFC read range and tap robustness for NTAG / MIFARE Classic / MIFARE DESFire cards under Apple iOS and Android reference handsets.
• Hotel-lock compatibility verification against common Assa Abloy, Dormakaba, Salto, Onity and Saflok door-lock families using physical keycards we encode to the lock's published sector layout.
• Chip programming & issuance validation (UID personalisation, NDEF URL, SUN / AES / DES key provisioning).

Industrial-laundry wash durability protocol

This is the protocol used whenever a page cites a wash-cycle count (e.g. '500 industrial wash cycles').

• N≥30Sample size per wash-durability claim
• 25Verify-read interval (cycles)
• p10 / p50 / p90Durability is reported as percentiles, not a peak number

• Reference standard: ISO 6330:2021 (textile wash / dry procedures) combined with IEC 60529 (ingress protection rating).
• Wash cycles: tunnel-washer emulation at 70 °C, 85 °C and 95 °C; full cycle = pre-wash + main-wash + rinse + extract.
• Detergent: commercial alkaline industrial detergent (pH 10.5–11.5); chlorinated bleach run is reported separately.
• Dry: high-pressure spin followed by gas tunnel-dryer at 150–180 °C flame, 60–80 °C exit air.
• Read-verify gate: tag is read through an HF or UHF verify reader after every 25 cycles; a tag is declared failed when two consecutive reads return no UID.
• Sample size per batch: N = 30. Results report median cycle-to-failure, 10th percentile, and 90th percentile. Not a single 'up to' maximum.

Read-range measurement protocol

Read range is the number most frequently misrepresented in RFID marketing. Our protocol is deliberately verbose so that every published figure can be reproduced.

• UHF / RAIN RFID: reference method is the free-space tag-talks-first (TTF) distance under ISO/IEC 18046-3, with reader output power, antenna gain and polarisation disclosed per test.
• HF / NFC: reference method is the NFC Forum Analog Technical Specification, with reader coil geometry and orientation disclosed per test.
• On-item read range: same tag measured on-item (cardboard carton, PET bottle, cotton T-shirt, metal surface with on-metal tag). All three or four numbers published together. Free-space only is never published alone.
• Environmental conditions: 22 ± 3 °C, 45 ± 15 % RH, RF-absorbent chamber.

Hotel-lock compatibility verification

Compatibility pages at /compatibility/* are backed by the hands-on test workflow below.

1. Step 1 — Lock identification

   We capture the lock make, model, firmware (where readable), and sector layout from the customer's field-sampled card.

2. Step 2 — Blank stock match

   Blank chip family (MIFARE Classic 1K / 4K, MIFARE Plus EV1 / EV2, MIFARE DESFire EV2 / EV3, Legic Advant, HID iCLASS SE) is matched to the lock's accepted families from public lock-vendor documentation.

3. Step 3 — Issuance

   Keys are provisioned using either the property's issuance software (preferred, produces customer-accepted card) or a generic ACR122U / OMNIKEY rig for compatibility validation only.

4. Step 4 — Lock cycling

   Card is tapped on the actual lock model (or a sister lock from the same family) for at least 50 successful unlocks; success rate is reported.

What we do not measure (and will not claim)

Explicit negative disclosures are part of the methodology.

• We do not measure long-term RF-exposure safety; we cite the relevant FCC, ICNIRP or EU limits instead.
• We do not make statistical claims about an entire chip family from a single manufacturing lot. All chip durability numbers are traceable to a named lot and wafer run.
• We do not re-publish third-party read-range videos as our own measurements.
• We do not extrapolate beyond our measured range. If we tested to 5 m, we do not claim 'up to 7 m'.

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