Jealous of your Nexus S-owning friends and their fancy NFC chips after yesterday's Google Wallet announcement? Well tech tinkerer Joe Desbonnet has whipped up what he dubs "poor man's NFC" using an Arduino, some magnet wire, and any compass-equipped Android smartphone (which is almost all of them). By placing a coil of wire on the phone and connecting it to the DIYer's favorite microcontroller, Desbonnet was able to send data, albeit very slowly, to his HTC Desire running a special app to decode the signals. Granted, you're probably not going to see American Eagle mod their point of sale systems to talk to your phone's magnetometer, but it's still a neat trick. In fact, we'd break out our Arduino right now to give it a try, but our secret lair is strangely devoid of enameled copper wire. Check out the source link for instructions, and don't miss the video after the break.
