On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 11:26 AM, Udhay Shankar N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gautam John wrote, [on 3/18/2008 10:09 AM]: > > > 1. It has a bar code scanner. > > 2. It saves the child id linked to a book id linked to a transaction, > > in or out, along with a date stamp. > > 3. We can take a data dump that we can upload. > > 4. It is battery powered. > > 5. It is rugged. > > 6. I don't know if we need a display but we need some method of > > indicating to the user a positive scan read. > > Can you get somebody to hack something together with scanlife?
Couple of things come to my mind immediately. A decent hand-held barcode scanner comes in at INR 4500 - 7000. Since I use most of these with desktop PCs I prefer to get them with PS/2 keyboard wedge interfaces. That ways its absolutely plug-n-play on Linux. While I do not know if it will be of any use in your case, you might wish to consider using a hand-held scanner with an UMPC style device. a) http://www.mileap.in/intelclassmate.htm (runs linux - http://www.flickr.com/photos/indradg/472696785/in/set-72157600102659560/) b) http://www.efytimes.com/efytimes/20518/news.htm (http://www.flickr.com/photos/indradg/429581562/in/set-72157594579834429/) The little green box in the picture. The entire rig is carried in a backpack, powered with a rechargeable 7AmH SMF battery (for demo purpose). By removing the monitor and replacing it with a smaller monochrome on (say 7 inch screen) or a 20x4 char LCD display we could increase the operational life of the battery And yet another wicked idea that comes to my mind is using an ASUS WL-500G wifi router (or something similar) with modified OpenWRT distro along with a 20x4 char LCD panel connected to the on-board LPT port using LCDproc. Need to figure out a way to interface the keyboard and barcode reader with the single USB 1.1 port, a power solution to drive it, when there is no power and a persistent storage FWIW, we recently purchased a WL-500G off ebay for 2000/- (it came in stamped at B'Bay Customs - "Less than USD 50, no customs required" just my 2p :) -indra
