Optical Mice as Cheap Barcode Scanners?

Ikester asks: "I've been evaluating a couple of barcode scanners including the CueCat (which some of you may recall from the failed off- online marketing stint by Digital Convergence) for a cataloging application. However, getting ahold of these 'free' wands is not that easy these days and it occurred to me that an optical mouse's hardware may be able to perform a similar function with the right mouse driver. For example, it could work as a regular mouse until it 'recognizes' a valid barcode. It could then send the code as if the user had typed it. I Googled the web and newsgroups but I didn't find anything relevant. I'm wondering if anybody from the Slashdot crowd has come across such an approach. With the recent proliferation of optical mice I'm thinking this could be the next best input device for linear barcodes. I have limited knowledge about mouse drivers and the actual design of these mice. Is this even possible?"

Comments

A Link to start you out.

[Merlin42]

How does an optical mouse work

I doubt this could be done (at least with any kind of reliability) at the driver level. It definately could be done with a little creative rewiring, but I would not be the right person to ask how to actually accomplish this.

How about a webcam instead?

[dozer]

check out SDLcam. I haven't used it yet but it looks sweet.

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