CueCat

[Auric]

I got one of these USB kitties and cut a trace to disable the serial then plugged in and installed HID software from the Win98 CD and then the CatNip proggy. Problem is, it flashes about once a second and will shine steady red when blocked/pressed against something but it will not read a barcode. Any ideas?

The hardware mod was followed from here.

I also tried CueDog but did not get any data.

 

[Trevelyan]

I've never understood the purpose of the cuecats... what do they do?

 

[dadx2mj]

I canned my cue cat long ago. Basically it is a bar cod reader. You scan a bar code off of any product and it open a web page for that product. For instance scan a bar code on a box of Crayollas and it opens Crayolla's web site. Problem was their data base was not very big and most times the software didn't know the product scanned and asked you for info so they could add it to the data base and it was widely considered to be spyware. Not to mention every time my kids saw a bar code they wanted me to scan it.

 

[Auric]

The intended purpose is not so hot but a a free barcode reader is good for cataloging books, CD's, DVD's (or packaged groceries) or just getting more information about them (from half.com for example). With the hacks and open software the spyware aspect is negated.

 

[BlackWob]

I used mind for about a week, when the RadioShack catalog came out last year. Then I promptly uninstalled it and shoved it on the bottom of the hardware closet because the background software/driver took too much memory running in the background.

Are you scanning really slowly? I noticed it is not the highest quality scanner, not like the supermarket one where you can flash for a ms and it will scan, but like you must scan slow and steadily.

 

[erub]

WHAT A POS

i got 3 of em, could never get it to work. worthless piece of junk. Good idea though, they now use them in the Dallas paper for additional links. Don't know if anybody else uses them, but, its a piece of trash