Wireless or Remote Barcode Scanning
You’ll see in the next chapter how to use a barcode scanner in your kitchen to track what’s in stock and know what you have to cook with. Making that work requires you to scan everything you put into and take out of the pantry, which could be inconvenient if you’ve not built a kitchen PC and your desktop PC is across the room (or house).
There are several ways to address this problem:
1. You could run the software on a laptop. If you keep the actual data files elsewhere, a wireless LAN would give you access to those files.
2. You could port the software to a handheld computer (see “Port the Software to Run Under Other Operating Systems” below) so you can bring everything to where you are.
3. You could run the software remotely on a desktop and use a long cable or wireless link to span the distance.We built sounds into the software so, with the volume high enough, you could hear if a scan was successful or if it failed. Chapter 2 (Wireless RS-232 Link) shows you how to build a wireless link you could use with a serial CueCat or other scanner using a serial interface; remember that the standard PS/2 keyboard port is just an RS-232 port itself, so you can use the wireless link there, too. Figure 7 shows how to modify the system — the wireless link literally extends the serial port cables, so neither the PC nor the Anything Inventory software should be the wiser when you’re done.
FIGURE 7: Extending the scanner with a wireless link
Barcodes give you an easy way to input identification data into your PC, and the standardization offered by the ubiquitous UPC-A and EAN-13 barcodes has led to public databases you can use to identify a wide variety of products. Some straightforward software classes are sufficient to scan items, look them up in a local or Internet database, and maintain a simple inventory. You can use the software directly for many purposes, and can extend it readily to build a wide variety of applications.