I am trying to get a Targus PA460 capacitive fingerprint scanner
(Authentec aes4000 driver) working with fprint and have had mixed (but
generally unacceptable) results. I am running Linux Mint 16.
I tried first with the stock Linux Mint binary packages and although the
scanner is always recognized, I was unable to enroll a finger; after the
first scan, fprintd would stop responding; other users have reported the
same problem. I have 4 scanners and they all behave identically. When
running fprintd -t in a console so I can see the results, the daemon
shows no activity when the fprintd-enroll task requests a rescan.
I rebuilt from source using libfprint-0.5.1 and fprintd-0.5.1 and the
results were better. I was able to get fingerprints enrolled using
fingerprint-gui, but it is very flaky and crashes frequently crashes.
With fprintd-enroll I was also able to enroll my right index finger
only. fprint-verify sometimes verifies successfully, but it generally
fails. There is also a serious defect in that if a scan fails, it will
not retry and the client app (enroll or verify) must be killed to resume
scanning (see defect reports below).
I realize the PA460 is a poor scanner (250dpi, 10mm square, 96x96
pixels), but one problem may be contrast; fprint_demo shows the captured
images and they have extremely light contrast; I have seen images
captured by fprint_demo with other scanners and they show high contrast
between ridges and grooves. I tried increasing the sensor gain
(libfprint/drivers/aes4000.c:94) from 0x23 to 0x33 and the results
seemed to improve. I found the hardware manual and non-official linux
USB driver source here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/aes4kusbdriver/ I'll read it and
experiment some more, to see if I can get better results.
Any help/suggestions would be appreciated, the PA460 is basically
unusable in its current state because it rarely verifies an enrolled
print. I have extra PA460s and can donate one to a project maintainer
if there's interest. Also, please see defect reports below.
Thanks!
Defect: if fprintd-verify shows "Verify result: verify-retry-scan (not
done)", fprintd-verify will not respond further until it is killed via
SIGINT. fprintd continues running properly.
Client shows:
~ $ fprintd-verify
Using device /net/reactivated/Fprint/Device/0
Listing enrolled fingers:
- #0: right-index-finger
Verify result: verify-retry-scan (not done)
Daemon shows:
~ $ sudo fprintd -t
Launching FprintObject
** Message: D-Bus service launched with name:
net.reactivated.Fprint
** Message: entering main loop
** Message: user 'dalbert' claiming the device: 0
** Message: now monitoring fd 16
** Message: device 0 claim status 0
** Message: adding finger 7 to the gallery
** Message: start identification device 0
** Message: identify_cb: result verify-retry-scan (100)
Defect: the cancel button does not work for the Authenticate dialog for
fprintd-enroll
Enhancement request: add option to display version.
P.S. I'm a very experienced C/C++ (mostly embedded systems) programmer;
is the project open to adding developers?
References:
http://www.datasheetarchive.com/AES4000-datasheet.html
http://sourceforge.net/projects/aes4kusbdriver/
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