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Now you can ring up your CharlieCard expenses
By adamg on Thu, 07/17/2014 - 10:28am
Beware his power, Green Line rider's might!
MBTAgifts has started selling Sesame Rings, which let you store your CharlieCard data on a ring, instead of on some boring old plastic card.
Last year, a group of MIT students launched a Kickstarter campaign to help them commercialize the rings.
THERE IS NO VALUE ON THE RING AS SOLD. Value must be added at a CharlieCard machine at an MBTA station.
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Comments
Well I know where I'm headed
Well I know where I'm headed after work. Just hope it doesn't look that gaudy in person.
is it discrimination
if they dont have rings to accommodate sausage fingers?
Does it expire after 10 years
Does it expire after 10 years the way the card does?
Do the rings have an expiration date?
I'm wondering if these rings will expire in the same way that Charlie Cards will expire after a number of years. My current Charlie Card, for example, expires in 2023. I know that's a long ways off, but I'd hope that a ring could be expected to have a longer lifespan (like, forever).
It is the charlie card chip.
It probably has an expiration date.
Edit: I wonder what happened to the charlie cards that "prematurely expired", did they replace or "reset" them?
My mother gave me one that
My mother gave me one that expired a few months back. I brought it to DTX and they exchanged it and reloaded the balance.
One thing about these rings though, do they have the same long ID number that the cards do somewhere? I hope so so you can register it online and reload passes/cancel in case of theft.
It does expire. I checked
It does expire. I checked with MBTAgifts
Another visibly valuable item
for punks to steal!
pretty paranoid. they're
pretty paranoid. they're gonna pull it off your finger? sometimes I wonder if i'm the only one under 60 on this site.
There's always this concern
There's always this concern about new things. I remember when Apple introduced TouchID, people were REALLY concerned that thieves would cut off victims' fingers in order to unlock phones.
look ma i made a seseme ring video
I was on the original kickstarter, got one of the first sets of handmade rings and love mine; I posted a 'bonking your way into the MBTA' video online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL8-YNUug_8
Here are the good and bad bits from my experience:
Honestly the best thing about this was seeing how the MBTA supported these kids and gave them access to the RFID supplier. It's great to see them actually 'bless' this sort of thing rather than try to stamp it down hard.
Of course the MBTA supported these kids
It's called free labor.
Now if only the MBTA (or Keolis) would get the MIT braintrust to develop an RFID system for the commuter rail.
Jumping
the geek shark.
Ooooo
I want one. Not to wear but to keep it on my key chain instead of carrying around that silly card.
Show me you hands!
Wait till the police pummel a fare evader who won't take their hands out of their pockets to show the magic ring.
Not Sandwich
I'd wear the ring, NOT! NOTTY NOT NOT! N N N NOT!
Sesame ring
I have one that I got during the original kickstarter campaign. If you put it on you finger backwards, you can just wave your hand over the the sensor on the gate and it appears to open magically. guess that is why they call it a 'sesame ring'.