I am creating an application that requires a credit card reader but I don't know where to find one that will work with objective c or any other language that will be compatible with the cocoa application. It is for desktop.
Thanks
I know this is a bit of an old question but here goes. I would recommend a MagTek or IDTECH HID MSR (Magnetic Swipe Reader). MagTek's output is ASCII and IDTECH is Hex so you can decide which is easiest.
If you are unable to interface with a HID device, you could use a Keyboard Emulated (KBE) but these are less secure as anyone can swipe into it any time and read the swipe data so I would not recommend as your first choice.
What Gateway are you going to be using for your payment processing? There are many out there, and many have encryption as an option to you. Axia Payments is one but there are dozen and dozens to choose from.
The last thing you need to keep in mind is the addition of EMV or Chip and PIN or Sig in the US. If your application will be taking card present transactions, your users would be required to keep their input abot 75% to not be subject to the burdens of liability post incident.
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I'm trying to interface a board level USB camera with a STM32 family microcontroller and send the image file to a central computer using CANbus. Just want to know if this is possible/ has been done before and how involved a task it would be.
I worked at a company where we sent live (low-resolution infra-red) video streams over CAN, but towards the end of my time there they shifted towards ethernet.
So it is possible, but certainly not what it is best suited for. The main advantages of CAN are that it is a multi-point, multi-master bus with built in arbitration. It is meant for short packets, typically 8 bytes (CAN FD allows you to increase that).
If your camera is USB, why not just get a USB repeater cable or USB-over-ethernet gateway?
If there is already a CAN network in place that you are piggy-backing onto then you need to consider what impact you will have on the existing traffic.
If you are starting from scratch then of course CAN will work but it would be an odd choice.
Depending on if its CAN or CANFD (Affects the maximum bulk transfer packet size) you have higher level protocol options to packetise your images and send them over canbus like any other block of data.
For just reguarlar CAN your after part of the standard called J1939.21 Data Link Layer, there are public versions of this floating around online, however due to the agreement when purchasing the standard, I am not able to share the specifics from what I have.
Its on pages 27-28 of the 2001 revision.
I am developing a software which needs a fingerprint ID to get access or login. Meanwhile, I can't work with Arduino and fingerprint sensors, because There is no mushc time ahead. I am thinking about using the integrated-Fingerfrint of my laptop to get Finger's ID. Is it possible to do such operation?
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is you will need a lot of things to do so. The first is you will need to find out which fingerprint scanner you have in your laptop. Then you will need to find out what SDK's that device manufacturer offers. Most will provide a image acquisition API that you can use to capture images. Most of those SDKs are going to have a C api that you will need to wrap in PInvoke calls.
Once you have images you will need an algorithm. There is a chance that the Device manufacturer sells an SDK that includes an algorithm, if not there are other companies that just build algorithms that you can purchase.
NIST also has an algorithm that is free, but it only has a C interface so again, you will have to do some work.
You might want to checkout https://www.fulcrumbiometrics.com. They support a large number of device manufactures and may be able to help you find what you are looking for.
I am building a temporary controller that needs to monitor 20 separate button pushes along with another 15-20 analog and digital signals.
It also needs to output at least 20 different digital signals.
Which Netdurino will let me get all these different ports together on a single device?
It seems like the Netduino Go with multiple shield bases (image) is the way to go.
Can anyone confirm that this is the hardware solution I am looking for with the most analog and digital ports available?
Thank you,
Keith
Seeing as you're settled on the Netduino platform, I'd suggest you ask either on the Netduino forums or in their live chat room http://forums.netduino.com/index.php?/chat/
Alternately, https://electronics.stackexchange.com/ might yield better answers than stackoverflow.
Note that in the forum post you link to for the shield base, they indicate that only one shield base is supported per Netduino (at the time of writing, this may have changed):
Another noob question: How many shield bases can one connect to a NGO? Is more than 1 a viable option?
Currently just one. But with the final release I'm hoping on more :)
It seems that a lot of small business people have a need for some customized embedded systems, but don't really know too much about the possibilities and cannot quite envisage them.
I had the same problem when trying to explain what Android could do; I was generally met with glazed eyes - and then I made a few demos. Somehow, being able to see something - to be able to touch it and play around with it – people have that cartoon lightbulb moment.
Even if it is not directly applicable to them, a demo starts them thinking about what could be useful to them.
The sort of person I am talking about may or may not be technical, but is certainly intelligent, having built from scratch a business which turns over millions.
Their needs are varied, from RFID or GPS asset & people tracking, to simple stock control systems, displays, communications, sometime satellite, sometimes VPN or LAN (wifi or RJ45). A lot of it needs a good back-end database with a web-site to display, query, data-mine …
So, to get to the question, I am looking for a simple project, or projects, which will cause that cartoon lightbulb moment. It need not be too complicated as those who need complicated solutions are generally tech-savvy, just something straightforward & showing what could be done to streamline their business and make it more profitable.
It would be nice it if could include some wifi/RJ45 comms, communicate across the internet (e.g not just a micro-controller attached to a single PC – that should then communicate with a server/web-site), an RFID reader would be nice, something actually happening (LEDs, sounds, etc), plus some database, database analysis/data-ming – something end-to-end, preferably in both directions.
A friend was suggesting a Rube Goldberg like contraption with a Lego Mindstorms attached to a local PC, but also controllable from a remote PC (representing head office) or web site. That would show remote control of devices. Maybe it could pick up some RFID tags and move them around (at random, or on command), representing stock control (or maybe employee/asset movement within a factory or warehouse (Location Based Services/GIS)), which cold then be shown on the web site, with some nice charts & graphs etc.
Any other ideas?
How best to implement it? One of those micro-controller starter kites like http://www.nerdkits.com/ ? Maybe some Lego, or similar robot kit, a few cheap RFID readers … anything else?
And – the $409,600 question – what's a good, representative demo which demonstrate as many functionalities as possible, as impressively as possible, with the least effort? (keeping it modular and allowing for easy addition of features, since there is such a wide area to cover)
p.s a tie with an Adroid slate PC would be welcome too
Your customers might respond better to a solid looking R/C truck which seeks RFID tags than to a Lego robot. Lego is cool, but it has a bit of a slapped-together 'kiddie' feel.
What if you:
scatter some RFID tags across the conference room.
add a GPS & wifi transmitter to your truck.
drive the truck to the tag
(manually - unless you want to invest a lot of time in steering algorithms).
have a PC drawing a real-time track of the trucks path.
every the truck gets within range of the tag, add it to an inventory list on the screen, showing item id, location, time recorded, total units so far.
indicate the position of the item on the map.
I'd be impressed.
Is it 'least effort'? I don't know, but I'd hope that if this is the type of solution you are pitching, that you already have a good handle on how to read GPS and RFID devices, how to establish a TCP or UDP connection with wifi, how to send and decode packets. Add some simple graphics and database lookup, and you are set.
Regarding hardware, I don't have any first hand experience with any of these, but the GadgetPC Wi-Fi G Kit + a USB RFID reader + a USB GPS reciever looks like a nice platform for experimenting with this.
Many chip manufactures have off-the-shelf demo boards. Microchip has some great demo boards for TCP/IP communications on an embedded system. I haven't seen one yet for RFID. Showing potential customers some of these demos could get them thinking about what is possible.
Variations of MIFARE Ultralight cards are becoming quite widespread. For example, huge transport companies employ them as payment cards.
As I get from MIFARE site and Wikipedia there's a full-blown microcomputer inside the card - with a processor, memory, etc. When I move the card close to the reader its field induces current in the card antenna, the card computer turns on and runs some complicated protocol to communicate with the reader.
That's all cool but could I write my own program that would run on such a card and do something useful a card doesn't do by default? What are simple examples of what such program could do?
The microprocessor based contactless cards are easy to work with, our company has had good success with the the NXP JCOP product line with wireless capability (this wireless capability is provided via MIFARE technology, but these are microprocessor cards and not MIFARE Ultralight cards.) The JCOP cards let you install your own Global Platform or Javacard cardlet apps on the card and commmunicate with them wirelessly using the ISO 14443 A protocol.
MIFARE Ultralight cards just store data - you can't write a program to run on the card. The MIFARe Classic and Plus variants are similar. MIFARE ProX, SmartMX & DESFire Cards are all microprocessor based cards.
The memory only cards are easy to work with - readers and cheap & easy to obtain via eBay or similar. I'm not sure how you develop with the microprocessor based cards because we've never used them.
I think you need to talk to MIFARE about that. My guess is that have some sort of software development kit as well as a special programmer for the card for potential developers. I haven't fully perused their site, so they may not allow individual developers to work on it, but do the work themselves as a service.