magnetic stripe reader

[ryan.arasteh]

Hi,


I want to write a c# application to capture the contents of a
magnetic stripe card with a card reader attached to the USB or COM
port of the PC. Are there any libraries or anything available to
do this, or do I need to read directly from the these port? Any
suggestions welcome or Any code samples :-0

 

[Ismail Pazarbasi]

I did it. It depends on your manufacturer. I used both serial and USB
swipe readers. Handling COM one is very trivial; just connect serial
port, and read data (asynchronously). For USB, manufacturer, mine was
Magtek, provides a HID driver that creates a COM port. Then you need to
do the same things you do with COM device. Finally, Magtek has another
USB device, which's a keyboard emulation. In my case, the focus was
guaranteed to be on a specific window, because there was no keyboard
and there was no touch screen - there is no way for user to change the
focus. In this case, when card is swiped, I was catching WM_CHAR
messages, placing them into a buffer.

Ismail