Some people have said to me “I forgot to take my Myki card” — to which I ask: “Why does it ever leave your wallet?”
If it stays in your wallet/purse, which most people would always have with them whenever they leave the house, you’re unlikely to forget your Myki. And the fact is, with a little care, you can touch-on and off from a wallet.
What I do is to keep it in one flap, as close to the side of the wallet as possible, and also as far as possible from any RFID cards — specifically in my case, a Paywave Mastercard and a Visa card — as these sometimes confuse Myki readers.
(This shouldn’t be the case actually. From what I’ve heard, buried deep in the RFID standard there is a feature that lets card issuers and readers specify a type of card they are using, and public transport-related cards such as Myki have a code they can use and look for. Apparently this hasn’t been implemented — or not implemented very well — by Myki.)
No doubt the removal of all single ticket options is going to cause problems. But for individuals wanting to avoid the issue of getting to the station and discovering they left their Myki at home, keeping it permanently in your wallet or purse will help a lot.
Other points of note in the video:
- The response times continue to be longer than comparable systems
- This was a touch-off at a station in zone 2 on a weekend — I have a zone 1 pass, so it charged me the difference between the $3.30 weekend rate and the $3.28 zone 1 fare — 2 cents. Both of these fares go up to $3.50 from January 1st, so zone 2 travel on weekends and public holidays will then come at no extra charge to zone 1 passholders.
- My drivers licence is normally in the pocket facing the camera; I took it out for filming this, for privacy reasons. One of my kids stuck a Metcard to his Myki, so it looks like he’s touching-on a Metcard when he travels!
- The reader does a double-beep on touch. My card is not a concession — it’s a discounted Commuter Club ticket. It does not cause a light to go-off at station gates, but still does the double-beep. Under Metcard these tickets did not cause a double-beep. Seems like the business rules for the beeps were either written or interpreted poorly under Myki. Of course, single and double beeps make little sense — a different touch-on and touch-off sound would have been far more useful (and would have saved me some confusion last week, in fact).
7 replies on “How to touch-on and off your #Myki from a wallet”
Good advice – as the end of Metcard (and the world, apparently) draws near.
A theory on why men don’t keep their myki’s in their wallets: it’s beciome fashionable to have a very thin wallet with almost nothing in it. Hence, things like myki cards are taken out. Sounds bizarre but check out young guys’ wallets these days.
I like the way most readers will scan my Myki card through my wallet (only when I open out the flap containing the Myki so that it’s a few centimetres away from my other cards), register a successful touch-on/touch-off and then one second later will beep angrily and say ‘Multiple cards detected’. Of course that locks up the reader for another three seconds so the next person can’t use it until the message goes away. That’s annoying, but I can’t fix it unless I carry the Myki separately from my wallet.
Yet another screw-up in a system that could have worked brilliantly. An Oyster reader can detect your card inside a wallet, inside your jacket pocket, as you wave it nearby while walking past (without stopping).
I’ve been doing it inside a wallet for a while, too. But I have credit cards in another wallet, to avoid problems.
Yes, there’s far too many screwups in the system. From the paper: The Public Transport Ombudsman is dealing with more than 30 different types of Myki problem.
Re: touch off/on speeds – Does anyone know what system the Oyster validators run (Linux?) I found out Myki is implemented on better hardware than Oyster, but Myki’s touch off/on is slower and that Myki hardware runs Windows CE.
I keep my Myki in my wallet, protected from the rest of my cards by a particular combination of coffee cards, loyalty cards and receipts and I have to be very careful to maintain the balance or else I get the Multiple cards detected error
I have no other RF cards, so currently NAP.
I doubt Myki will work on my RFID blocking wallet.
My boyfriend also has a metcard glued to his myki. I love watching gate agents try to stop/correct him touching the card, and then the look on their faces when it works – classic!