Basic input of barcodes?

[JimHorton]

Hi all,
I did a few barcode projects a few years back and I'm sure things have changed. My question is: What would a standard (or common) method be of getting input to a vb program from a swiping device, either a keyboard or standalone cardswipe? This would be for timeclock input, so people would be just walking up and swiping one-by-one. I'm not really concerned about the 'final destination' as far as the database at this point, just the raw collection of the data.

For example--and as a point of reference to what I'm used to--in the past I'd have a vb exe running with the msComm control, and the barcodes came in via serial port and I used the control's event (I've even forgotten the eventname, I think it was OnComm) to process the input. Although this worked very well, it seemed kludgey then and I've got to think it's even kludgeier now. Would this still be an acceptable or 'standard' way (if there is any such thing) of collecting input? I'm not even sure if the interface will be serial or usb or ethernet or whatever.

I'd like to avoid having to have a vb exe running--maybe a dll running as a service instead (this will be on Win 2000 server), or whatever. I guess I'm just looking for a very general outline of what would be a good starting point, since I just remember the msComm control being tedious to work with. Thanks for any advice,
--Jim

 

[Guest_imported]

From what I understand, the MSComm is still the way to do it. Although, if your scanner is a so-called keyboard wedge device, inouts as the keyboard.

A kbd wedge has 2 cables: one plugs into the cpu to replace the actual kbd, and the kbd itself plugs into the other cable. The 2 devices are in series and the cpu knows no difference between the input from either.

So as long as your textbox or whatever has focus, it's as iff the user hit the keys. Jim Brown,
Johannesburg,
South Africa.
My time is GMT+2

 

[JimHorton]

Jim,
Thanks for responding. This sounds like the keyboard wedge is not the way to go for what I want. Ie, it sounds like this way I'd have to have an open form with focus on a textbox, using the OnChange event of the textbox. Then if, for whatever reason, the focus on the textbox is lost, so is my input. Am I correct here?
--Jim

 

[Guest_imported]

Yes I think you're right Jim. Jim Jim Brown,
Johannesburg,
South Africa.
My time is GMT+2

 

[DougP]

See if this will help

http://www.jspayne.com/io/home.html

This company makes a nice .DLL to monitor the serial port

http://www.taltech.com/

DougP, MCP

 

[JimHorton]

Dougp,
Thanks...I'd dealt with Tal before and I'd purchased an activeX barcode font from them, but I'll look into the comm control replacements...
--Jim

 

[DougP]

Did you look at the Serial options Tal offers?

http://www.taltech.com/TALtech_web/products/winwedge.html

DougP, MCP

 

[JimHorton]

DougP,
Have not yet checked that out, but I will. Thanks,
--Jim