Create amiibo clones with Arduino - konstantin-kelemen/arduino-amiibo-tools GitHub Wiki

Probably the cheapest way of making amiibo clones.

Amiibos are the NFC-enabled figurines and cards manufactured by Nintendo. There is a lot of games for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS which use amiibo in a number of ways. Learn more about amiibo on Nintendo site

Nowadays there is more and more games appear which annoyingly ask the player to buy new figurines. It's more comfortable and fun to play! — they say. Other games went even farther and don't work without amiibos at all.

If you're a collector and don't mind spending 10-15 bucks on another figurine then you can stop reading right here. This article might be interesting for more practical and thrifty readers who would like to get familiar with amiibo but don't want to spend a lot of money on a collection of certainly beautiful but pretty useless things the main purpose of which is to collect dust on shelves.

And probably you're trying to protect your amiibo figurines so hard that you don't want to touch them at all. Then this article may be useful for you! You will be able to make the exact copies of your figurines and play with them, while the originals are kept in a safe!

Interested? Then let's do it!

First let's check that we have all the tools required:

Arduino and NFC shield. There is also a bundle and an ultimate kit
Some wires to conveniently connect Arduino to the NFC module
Blank NTAG215 NFC tags — one per amiibo figurine
My Arduino sketches for amiibo management
Arduino library for the NFC shield
Amiibo dump in bin format
Encryption/decryption key for the dump editing (it is usually not linked directly but easily found by googling "Use this to Encrypt your custom Amiibo NTag pastebin")

Getting the NFC tag UID

First let's find all the required info on the NFC tag which we want to write the amiibo dump into.

Use the Dumpinfo sketch which comes with the NFC shield library in order to get the NFC tag UID.

Run the sketch and put the card on the reader:

Tag UID

In my case, the UID is 0403482AE33E81

Getting the amiibo dump

Now it is required to dump the amiibo figurine that we have. Dumps from the Internet are suitable too. Usually you can find them by googling "Amiibo BINs".

I made an Arduino sketch to make amiibo dumps which is called Dump_amiibo. It's enough to upload it into Arduino and put the figurine on the reader. In a few seconds the dump will appear on the screen. Just copy it into a hex-editor and save the resulting file. In this example I called mine as Chibi-Robo.dump.bin.

Decoding, editing, and encoding the dump

Now prepare the dump to be written to the tag.

Go to https://games.kel.mn/amiibo, pick your dump, the key then specify the UID of the blank tag. Press "Submit".

On the next page you will get the code of the dump made specifically for your tag.

Writing the dump into the NFC tag

Now this code should be pasted into the Write_amiibo Arduino sketch.

Copy the results into the sketch:

Write_amiibo sketch

Run the sketch, put the tag, wait till the writing process is finished.

After you see the "Write finished! Now please take your Amiibo card away!" message it is safe to take the tag away.

Results

If all the steps were performed correctly then your amiibo clone is ready!

Pwned!

Update Apr 24, 2017

As more and more people ask for support of PN532 NFC board, I decided to make sketches for it. In order to do so, I need to order a board and some blank tags to test it with. Currently you can buy a board for $10.27 and 20 tags for $13.49, including shipping. If you like the idea and want to help me with it, click the "Donate" button below. As soon as I get an amount required I will remove the button and post an update here. I will also make the sketches available one week earlier to those readers who donated money to the project.

Update Apr 30, 2017

Redditor ShoGinn released a companion script for this article! It greatly simplifies the process and helps you to avoid unnecessary mistakes and wasted tags! Check for more info: Companion script to simplify amiibo cloning with Arduino

Update May 1, 2017

Thanks to the previously released script, now there is a hassle-free online tool at https://games.kel.mn/amiibo which will help you to prepare your dump super fast! The article has been edited in order to reflect this change.

Update May 4, 2017

Thanks to kind donations of several people, the required amount has been collected just in few days! I'm ordering the required equipment and starting work on sketches for PN532 module. The donation button has been removed but you still can support this site buying tags and other things from the links below or by donating with a button on the sidebar. I will keep this post updated with all the details on the future developments.

Update May 11, 2017

The online tool has been updated! It now displays the output in a popup window, which is more convenient and takes less time. There is also the "Copy to Clipboard" button to make it even easier! Please share your experience with the updated tool in the comment section. Thanks!

Sources: Making Amiibo NTAG215s — GBATemp.net NTAG213/215/216 datasheet bkifft's amiiscript.sh