Laser Scanners: Do you know what Kyeboard Wedge is ?

[Serban Giuroiu]

On Thursday 17 August 2006 22:01, Henry Lenzi wrote:
>  I found this, that claims to work "out of the box". Apparently, there
> is this interface called Keyboard Wedge.
>
>  Anyone know anything about this interface and how its integrated in
> FreeBSD?
>
>  There's some info here: http://www.csensors.com/kbdwedge.html

I've used one of these before. As the link points out:

"What exactly is a keyboard wedge? A keyboard wedge can be either hardware or 
software. Let's look at the hardware type first. It's called a wedge because 
it "wedges" in between the system keyboard and the computer console. The 
wedge interface is built into the barcode scanner. Examples are our  AS8113 
and GT-7000 hand held scannes. Physically, the keyboard plugs into the 
scanner and the scanner plugs into the computer console. When you type on the 
keyboard, the characters are sent to the computer as usual. When you scan a 
barcode, the barcoded characters are converted to keyboard "key codes", and 
sent to the computer. So, the computer thinks that the data in the barcode 
was typed on the keyboard."

Basically, it it pretends to be a keyboard. It plugs into the PS/2 port of 
your computer, and your keyboard plugs in on top of it. When you scan a bar 
code, it "types" out the code as if you had typed it in by hand. It will work 
with any operating system that supports a PS/2 keyboard. No special driver 
necessary.

-- 
Serban Giuroiu
http://javatheory.net