Bar code scanners that have a USB interface normally work one of two
ways.
The first is that the scanner will identify itself as a "keyboard"
device to Windows and when you scan a bar code, the data will go into
the PC as if it were being typed in on the keyboard.
The second way that they can work is to emulate a COM port. If your
bar code scanner came with a "driver" disk, then this is most likely
how it works. After you install the driver and connect the scanner to
the PC, Windows will think that it has another COM port. The COM port
will actually be a "virtual" com port that was created by the driver
and you would then need to run software that open the new virtual COM
port to read in the data from the scanner. One product that is
designed for this is called BC-Wedge and you can download a demo
version of it from:
http://www.taltech.com/products/bcwedge.html
BCWedge is a "software wedge" program that runs in the background and
opens up a COM port (either a real COM port or a Virtual COM port) and
when it receives data from the COM port (i.e. when you scan a bar code
with your bar code scanner) it feeds the data to other Windows
programs by stuffing the keyboard buffer so that the data appears as
if it is being typed in on the keyboard.
You may want to check the documentation that came with your USB bar
code scanner to find out exactly how it is designed to work.
On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 12:53:03 -0800, "Darrell Wesley"
<Da***********@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
Is there a good source of information on how to read a USB port, in
particular reading data from a BarCode reader?
