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View Full Version : Symbol Microscan Bar Code scanner



MardukKurios
20th October 2005, 09:46 PM
I have a Symbol Microscan USB barcode scanner on a Fedora Core 4 system. It works much like a USB keyboard, and it uses the keybdev driver.

I would like to direct the output from this scanner to a specific program, even if there is a browser running or whatnot. If a user is looking at a webpage, and a barcode is scanned, I want to interrupt whatever is currently happening, process the barcode scanned and present the user with a webpage that displays information about the product scanned.

Any advice on how to do this? Hack the keybdev driver?

I have looked into JavaPOS in hopes that it might allow me to do this. The new version, however, only supports IBM products, and the one that was supposed to be written by Wincor Nixdorf in 2001 (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=67156&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=149665&highlight=) seems to be vaporware.

http://www.javapos.com/ is one of the least intuitive sites I have seen, many of the links don't work, and the new version of JavaPOS is IBM-only. Don't even ask about the docs on this site.

Ulitmately, JavaPOS is probbaly more than I want right now anyway, and I'm not even sure if it can do what I want it to.

So - any advice in trapping input from a specific USB keyboard (in this case a barcode scanner) and forcing it to pass it's output to a specific program/process regardless what else the system is doing?

Thanks in advance.

MK