Re: TimeTable

[Adam Tauno Williams <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>How does the card reader interface with the computer? keyboard
>pass-through?
>serial? I've played with barcode readers before and getting input from them
>was very easy, basically because they used a keyboard pass-through method.
>As long as its easy to get the input from the card reader and the program
>doesn't have to be too complex on the time tracking side(misc reporting and
>>effiency functions, etc..), it would probably be a weekend project.

Since card readers vary some-what between other card readers it would be best to
select to or three models that would be applicable to this project, and in the
price range (these can be quite expensive) and see how they connect.  The
keyboard ones are nice in that they don't require any driving/drivers, etc... 
But it would require someone to login and start the application, etc...   The
cleanest solution might be to get a reader that connects to a serial port, and
if their is a server somewhere have some type of "listener" scribble incoming
strings to a file.

>I'm sure there are solutions for this already, but I'm not familiar with
>any of them, nor have any idea what it would cost.

They (the card readers) can be rather expensive.  If you'd got a good
HAMmer/hardware-uber-geek  they might be able to interface some surplus stripe
readers for you for alot less money.  I saw this done along time ago with card
readers taken from old copy machines (the cards were used to bill customers for
the copies) and a DOS machine.

Systems and Network Administrator
Morrison Industries
1825 Monroe Ave NW.
Grand Rapids, MI. 49505