Barcodes!

["Ian Lowe" <ian@xxxxxxx>]

Well, our box of *five* cue-cat readers arrived from the States. (not two
months after all)

Can I just reiterate, i got *five* of these for $9.99USD and $6.50
shipping.
They come up on ebay a lot.

These are incredibly dinky (especially if you remove the dodgy
"cat"
plastics)

In a fit of "keen" I hacked two of them to remove the serial
number and
encryption, and now have two "native" PS/2 scanners.

That's when Jenni had an idea. Perhaps the serial number placed in the scan
by Digital Convergence is useful. We intend to use three of the scanners
either "built in" or sat beside:

1) The Fridge
2) The Freezer
3) The Main Food Cupboards

(The other two become one on my PC for barcode databse maintenance/dev work
ane one for the laptop)

The native cuecat returns this:
..C3nZC3nZC3nWChvYCxf1D3nY.bNjW.DNnZC3b3Dhn0C3TZEW. when I scan a 300ml
bottle of macleans complete care coolmint mouthwash. (happened to be on my
desk)

Loading the "catnip" software for removing encryption provides
many options
for processing, including passing the (decrypted) Serial Number + Barcode
with a "." seperator

With catnip in place, it becomes the rather clearer:
000000003361226401.5000347070808

Given that the serial number for each cat is always the same, I can then
use
this sequence of kepresses (000000003361226401.) as a girder trigger event
to mean "incoming scan from the fridge" (or, at least, thats the
plan)

Next steps:
1) extending the PS/2 connection over the CAT-5 to the Kitchen without
spending £100 on an extender!
2) running two/three cue-cats over this extended link (I have already ran
all five at once here on my desk!)
3) scanning *everything* in the cupboard as a test of how fast it is.
4) Scanning and OCRing my last ASDA receipt, which includes the following
on
each line:
Item Name, Barcode Number, Cost per Item

Ian.