Subject:
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Re: cue cat
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Wed, 22 Nov 2000 00:18:22 GMT
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Original-From:
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Brian Connors <connorbd@#IHateSpam#yahoo.com>
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Viewed:
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597 times
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--- Jason Stern <2busytobe@home.com> wrote:
> everyone knows that radio shack is giving away cue
> cats free, don't
> they? The cue cat is an optical reader used for
> reading barcodes. Inside
> the cat is a light sensor that might be useful for
> robotics. I think the
> light sensor in the cat is fairly weak, mayby with a
> range of 1/2 inch
> (I don't know for sure, I've never used a cue cat),
> but it could probaly
> be used as a card reader or as a close range object
> detector, etc. Has
> anyone adapted a cat for use with the rcx? If so,
> how? Since the cue
> cats are completly, one hundred percent free, (I
> just walked into a
> radio shack, asked for a cat, got one and walked
> out), they would make a
> sensor that you could have as many as you want, an
> virtualy unlimited
> light sensor source! I'd love feedback on this.
> Thanks in advance!
Here's what you'd need to know about the 'Cat...
-The 'Cat operates as a keyboard wedge, i.e. it goes
in the same port as the keyboard and behaves the same
way. Directly connecting it to the RCX isn't going to
happen (unless of course you know a way of
multiplexing the pinout on a PS/2 keyboard).
-The 'Cat's raw output stream is virtually useless for
direct input -- Digital Convergence slapped a rather
silly base64-based encryption scheme on it that had to
be cracked before any useful third-party development
could be done with it. It is not known to be able to
transmit raw barcode output for later processing on
the CPU (which means it takes what it takes and it
can't be upgraded).
-It reads quite an assortment of barcodes, but gets
the best results with UPC, ISBN, and Codabar. It tends
to be a bit myopic with its own format (a hacked form
of Code 128) and can barely handle (or not handle at
all) most others. No idea whether this includes
CodePilot/VLL, though this is an experiment I'd like
to try.
-The output stream mentioned above includes three
components: the serial number of the unit (used by DC
for demographic tracking and almost completely free of
any legitimate use), the type of barcode, and the code
itself.
The best way to use a CueCat with Mindstorms is to try
to figure out if it can scan CodePilot codes and then
write a program to try and generate meaningful NQC (or
other appropriate language) code with it. Might be
great for creating a toy for the kids, but not too
useful.
If you want more info on this sort of thing, you
probably want to go to freshmeat.net and search for
cuecat. You'll get a lot of little bits of useful
software (including a nicely polished perl program
called qccat that I wrote based on someone else's work
for people using 'Cats with Unix shell scripts), most
of which Digital Convergence hates because they bypass
DC's Ever So Useful Service(tm). I wouldn't worry
about that too much -- the 'Cat is a basically
full-featured bar code reader, and their licensing
agreement holds up about as well as a deflated
balloon.
Go for it. Just don't be expecting to do anything
terribly interesting with it.
/Brian
=====
--
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: cue cat
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| (...) If I :understood the original :poster correctly, the :idea is to :disassemble the :Cat and :remove its light :sensor. I don't think the :idea was to use the :Cat directly. :Kekoa (24 years ago, 22-Nov-00, to lugnet.robotics)
| | | Re: cue cat
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| (...) I am sorry if there has been a major misunderstanding here. My point about cue cat was that it is a source of supply for free sensors, in terms of LEDs and phototransistors. I fully intended to take 90% of the guts and bin them! JB (24 years ago, 22-Nov-00, to lugnet.robotics)
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