proxmark3

This device can do almost anything involving almost any kind of low ( 125 kHz) or high ( 13.56 MHz) frequency RFID tag. It can act as a reader. It can eavesdrop on a transaction between another reader and a tag. It can analyse the signal received over the air more closely, for example to perform an attack in which we derive information from the tag’s instantaneous power consumption. It can pretend to be a tag itself. It is also capable of some less obviously useful operations that might come in handy for development work.

The Proxmark III is a RFID development tool. Typically, an "out of the box" proxmark3 with the latest firmware can run acquisitions in LF and HF mode and output traces, quite useful already, decode a number of different tag types, do some operations in ISO 15693 and ISO 14443 a and b modes, but if you really want to get the most out of this device, you will need to start enhancing the firmware yourself to suit your needs.

As long as you only want to add higher level functions over the RF layers that are already coded into the FPGA, you should be fine without VHDL skills, but if you want to actually go deeper and have the proxmark3 support new modulations, this will require modifying the FPGA verilog code, an interesting exercise if you’re motivated or are already a pro in that area, but very time consuming if you’re getting started !