Slashdot Mirror
CueCat Patent Granted, Finally
RobertB-DC writes "Who could forget the :CueCat, the amazing device that would bring 'convergence' between the real world and the online marketing Utopia of the late '90s? Belo, the Dallas-based newspaper and TV conglomerate, spent millions of dollars on the project, only to be ridiculed from the start and eventually becoming a sort of poster kitty for the Dot-Com Bust. Well, the device's inventor and chief cheerleader, J. Jovan Philyaw, didn't forget. His patent application, in progress since 1998, has finally been granted. The story comes from a Dallas alternative weekly, since the local Belo paper is still smarting from its $40-million-dollar black eye."
I still have a dozen cardboard boxes of them, including all PS/2 revisions and the short-lived USB versions, that I used to test my CueCat driver for Linux (here if you care about abandonware.)
If you look at the "Related Applications" section, I see something like a score of issued patents in this family, give or take a few. So this is not anything like the "real" :CueCat patent. This is a continuation-in-part, meaning they are adding new matter to the original application (some incremental improvement, usually). Apparently, these guys are intent on patenting every little incremental improvement they can think of for their famous failure. Why? Are they stacking their portfolio with an eye to future litigation? If true, that's the real story.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
It is worth noting that there are two different basic types of CueCat declawing.
The normal format for the CueCat is a long "encypted" string that contains three pieces of information, A serial number, information about the barcode type, and the raw barcode data.
The first type of declawing merely makes the serial number be a sting of dashes or zeros. This was only really useful with the official software, as the unoffensive drivers that support the CueCat's native format normally ignore the serial number.
The second type of declawing, which would be more accurately described as "fixing" (neutering) the CueCat, is a modification that results in the CueCat retuning just the raw barcode data in plaintext, followed by the enter key.
(My understanding is that the CueCat always functions as a keyboard, in all modes, but the official software intercepted the output.)
I vaguely remember that one configuration Code128 bar codes would not scan correctly, but they did work in a different configuration. Does anybody remember what configuration that was? I think it was either the neutered configuration, or the non-neutered configuration when using the official software.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
This news prompted me to drag out my two :Cats and decrypt the output on them, so I can finally use them as raw scanners. I dug out the copper trace to pin 10 of the Hyundai IC on both of them and, voila, it outputs raw numeric ASCII data whenever it spies a barcode. I've had archived details on how to do this for years, but never got a round tuit (those tuits are pretty scarce and hard to find in their own right). Turns out I Googled the part number on the PCBs and found several pages detailing the process for that specific PCB.