Last week I was playing with reverse engineering protocol of 3M 810 RFID reader to make it integrated with our Koha installation.
Currently I understand enough protocol to detect and read tags, but programming and blanking is just a matter of (free) time. Current source code (if anybody wants to take a look) is available at: http://svn.rot13.org/index.cgi/RFID Now I'm in stage where I would love to integrate it in Koha, so I'm seeking for feedback. Since machines on which reader is connected are Windows, and data which can be gathered are usable only when paired with data from Koha, I have two possible solutions: 1) Connect RFID reader serial port to some kind of Windows service (suggestions welcomed!) which would allow my perl script to connect it over network and drive reader (this has additional benefit that all pages in web browser come from my Koha server, so I don't have problem with same origin policy in browser). 2) install perl on windows and run reader driver there, integrating with Koha using frame set (one frame Koha window, another frame reader) This would require to have some kind of REST API for Koha which I could use from JavaScript within browser. I would like to support following user interaction with Koha (and reader): * putting book on RFID reader opens it's record in Koha (this would probably require some kind of long-poll from browser to Koha so that server can update browser window as soon as RFID tag is detected) * button which allows you re-program RFID tag of book on reader by clicking on button beside bar-code in Koha interface. Sound indication would provide feedback about finish of programming. I would prefer solution (1), but solution (2) would allow me to use firefox -remove to change browser URL and I would be able to generate sound notification easily (without some kind of flash which would be needed to make sound identification work in first possible solution) However, making less moving parts on 30 machines which have reader connected to them seems like good enough reason to move all logic to server driven readers. I could probably write few more pages about this, but this might be enough for this message. Your comments are greatly appreciated :-) -- Dobrica Pavlinusic 2share!2flame [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unix addict. Internet consultant. http://www.rot13.org/~dpavlin _______________________________________________ Koha-devel mailing list Koha-devel@lists.koha.org http://lists.koha.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
