Here a fritzing layout for wire a RC522 with the Raspberry Pi incl. IRQ Pin, 2 different views (RPi3 and RPi Zero) on the same schematic in line with the recommended pinout.

You have to wire the IRQ Pin from RC522 to Raspberry Pin 18/GPIO 24. See also https://github.com/MiczFlor/RPi-Jukebox-RFID/issues/1227#issuecomment-881250852

See the fritzing Picture (brown cable is the IRQ Pin) ...you must soldering all 8 wires from the Reader...

RPi Zero:

RPi3:

Alternative wiring

The following table shows an alternative wiring using pins 17 and 20 for 3.3V and GND respectively instead of 1 and 6 (leftmost and rightmost columns are pins on the Raspi and RC 522). This allows to use the consecutive block from pin 17 to pin 24. In particular, one can use a ribbon cable with a 4x2 plug on the raspi end and an 8x1 plug on the RC522 end to connect the two. The middle two columns are meant to simplify building such a cable: on the raspi side "relative" = actual - 16 on the RC 522 side "relative" = 9 - actual.

Raspi	Raspi Relative	RC 522 Relative	RC 522
17	1	1	8
18	2	4	5
19	3	6	3
20	4	3	6
21	5	5	4
22	6	2	7
23	7	7	2
24	8	8	1

Alternative Pinout for irq / reset

If you need to change the GPIO Pins for irq or reset you only need to change one Parameter. Edit the Reader.py (original name is Reader.py.experimental) nano /home/pi/RPi-Jukebox-RFID/scripts/Reader.py

Edit Line 55:

original: self.device = pirc522.RFID()

New (Reset = Pin 16 / IRQ = Pin 15): self.device = pirc522.RFID(pin_rst=16, pin_irq=15)

Pin means the physical Pinnumber and not the GPIO Number. To see all Pinnumbers use the command gpio readall

Increasing the RFID reader sensitivity

If your RFID tags are not being read, it is possible to increase the sensitivity of the RFID reader and thus achieve a slightly higher range.

Only one parameter needs to be changed. This is also done in Reader.py (original: Reader.py.experimental). nano /home/pi/RPi-Jukebox-RFID/scripts/Reader.py

Edit Line 55:

original: self.device = pirc522.RFID()

New: self.device = pirc522.RFID(antenna_gain=0x07)

Possible values for 'antenna_gain':

Value	Antena Gain	Default
0x04	33 dB	Yes
0x05	38 dB
0x06	43 dB
0x07	48 dB

Multiple Changes

It is also possible to select an alternative pinout and increase the RFID reader sensitivity.

To do this, enter both parameter changes in line 55: self.device = pirc522.RFID(pin_rst=16, pin_irq=15, antenna_gain=0x07)