USB Barcode scanner.

Question

I have a USB Zebex barcode scanner, this device works properly using Windows XP and Windows Vista when I open Notepad.

However I can't get it to work on Ubuntu. I open Gedit, and it makes the same noise as in Windows, but nothing scans.

Any advice will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Two things you could try:

xinput list

This will give you a list of all input devices that are recognized by Xorg and allows you to enable or disable devices as well as test them (replace ${DEVICEID} with what is displayed by xinput list):

xinput set-int-prop ${DEVICEID} 'Device Enabled' 32 1
xinput test ${DEVICEID}

Second thing you could try would be the more low-level evtest tool (replace /dev/input/eventX with the proper device file):

evtest /dev/input/eventX

It should print events to the screen when it gets data. evtest is part of the joystick package in Ubuntu.

Neither of these will make your Barcode scanner work, but they will allow you to figure out where the problem is. If evtest works, but xinput doesn't, then you have to tweak your Xorg.conf and manually add it as extra keyboard, if neither works then its a Kernel driver problem.

Answer 2

Does the sound come from the PC speakers or from the scanner?

Check and make sure the scanner is properly detected

dmesg

and see if you have something that looks like this when you plug in the scanner

usb 5-1: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
usb 5-1: new device found, idVendor=0000, idProduct=0001
usb 5-1: new device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
input: HID 0000:0001 as /class/input/input6
input: USB HID v1.00 Keyboard [HID 0000:0001] on usb-0000:00:10.3-1

if you see the above, then you should also see events in dmesg after you push the scan button.

if you dont see the above, then you probably need to initialize the usb keyboard module with you might try

sudo modprobe usbkbd

• reference: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=988219