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

How Optical Mice Work

[droyad]

Optical mice work by sending out pulses (not constant) of light and analysing the way it comes back (angle, phase, brightness) and uses that do determine how the mouse has moved.

The mouse then turns this signal into a standard "mouse" signal to send to the computer. As far as the computer is concerned it doesn't care how the mouse works out how it moves. An analogy is inheritence and polymorphism in OO programming. ie, "I don't care how you implement this datastructure, as long as I can do x,y,z and get r)."

So as far as the computer is concerned it cannot tell the difference from the mouse going over a desk, barcode or picture of Claudia Schiffer. (On a side note, optical mice do not work on mat black surfaces as the light does not reflect.)

I am getting more and more annoyed at the morons that are allowed to post to slashdot, yet alone post to Ask Slashdot.