[sane-devel] RS232 Scanner

Dan Scott danieljamesscott at gmail.com
Wed Jul 30 09:26:19 UTC 2008


Hi,

I'm working on getting a RS232 scanner working on Linux. I see that
Sane has some support for serial port scanners but not much. The
scanner is attached to a POS system for retail sales and runs RHEL5.

Unfortunately, I have no documentation for the scanner, I'm not even
sure of the brand. There's a logo on the front which is 'G' followed
by a globe symbol, followed by 'T' so it could be 'GOT' or 'GT'. There
does not appear to be a model number although there is an
identification place which is written in Chinese.

I have a compiled diagnostic application (no source code) which can
control the scanner and I have tried logging the system calls using
the 'ltrace' command, so that I can figure out the protocol. I have
tried writing a program to mimic the diagnostic application which
sends the same commands to the serial port but the scanner does not
respond.

Does anyone have any expertise in RS232 scanner protocols? All my
searching on the web reveals results for barcode scanners which appear
to work very differently from image scanners.

As a final note, I am trying to use the scanner for OMR - the
diagnostic application returns an array of data relating to the marks
entered on a slip of paper - if that is any use. Also, I can attach
the log file of system calls made by the diagnostic application if
that will help anyone.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dan Scott



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