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.
- Make sure the scanner is synced to the base station and the base station plugged into your Mac.
- Open a new document in TextEdit or TextWrangler.
- Scan in a bar code.
- If it doesn't work, you will either see junk/whitespace or nothing.
- Now, unplug the power from the base station.
- Scan again. You will get an error on the scanner saying it can't contact the base station.
- Plug the base station back into the electrical and hit enter on the scanner to have it reconnect.
- 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