Make a Symbol barcode scanner work with Mac OS X

Mar 25, '10 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: CyberSkull

Mac OS X recognizes the Symbol PL470 wireless barcode scanner as a keyboard when the base station is plugged in via USB, but it is not able to understand it. There is a specific trick involved in getting the input to match up. I use the scanner mainly to input bar codes into Delicious Library (and Delicious Library will crash if the input is not valid!).

Here's how to get it to work. It's a weird series of steps.

  1. Make sure the scanner is synced to the base station and the base station plugged into your Mac.
  2. Open a new document in TextEdit or TextWrangler.
  3. Scan in a bar code.
  4. If it doesn't work, you will either see junk/whitespace or nothing.
  5. Now, unplug the power from the base station.
  6. Scan again. You will get an error on the scanner saying it can't contact the base station.
  7. Plug the base station back into the electrical and hit enter on the scanner to have it reconnect.
  8. Try scanning again. You should now have a valid bar code, e.g. 781932386776 followed by a line break (a keyboard return is included at the end of a valid scan).
I'm not entirely sure what is happening here; my best guess is that the lack of base station connectivity causes the scanner to reset its keyboard encoding output. That, or reconnecting to the base station causes a reset or renegotiation with the computer. Whatever the reason, it works -- happy scanning!

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100323152816269