I know that the below question might not make sense since im still a newbie.I m not sure if this is even the right section.
I was wondering if a digital persona fingerprint reader was connected through usb would it be able to function . Since when asked in the .NETMF forum they said that it would possibly need a modified driver of the usb module for it to function would anyone possibly know how to do this.
I think that’s going to depend on your definition of working… There are two pieces to a fingerprint scanner - the hardware and the software. You could probably get the hardware working but the software they provide most definitely will not work in NETMF. So, are you just trying to get the scanner to work so you can write your own software or are you looking to be able to take their off the shelf product (hardware & software) and make it work on NETMF hardware?
First off what do you understand by software.
As what we have are the dlls of digital persona which are available in C# , VB6, and VB.NET meaning that they are probably quite low-level.
But I really wish to know if these would be functional on .NETMF. Would there be any way of testing this or possibly emulating it?
C# DLLs are most probably for a .Net application on a windows PC. That’s not .NETMF.
Step 1 would be to take the code on the USB discovery helper and deploy to your device, http://code.tinyclr.com/project/164/usb-discovery-helper/
See what it reports; if anything comes back that makes sense to connect to, then there are portions of the USBHost on your Fez that it might be possible to interface to the hardware.
The thing is, I suspect nobody has tried this before, and at this point we don’t know what reader or Fez you have to work with. So you’re largely on your own, unless someone else happens to have the same reader sitting around and they wanted to start playing.
I guess this is the brand/device you have?
Yes this is the device also possibility for the 4000.
So my answer to you would be “it’s not possible, unless you’re happy to work in the depths of USB and the NETMF. There’s probably a way to make it work, but it will require you to figure out a lot of stuff, and there’s a good chance you will be on your own since nobody else here is likely to have done this before (and may never do this again in the future).”
So my follow up question would be - what do you think makes this appealing to you ? Is this for a commercial product, and if so my suggestion would be to jump on the phone and call GHI and talk to them - they are probably more attuned to assist in a 1-on-1 scenario rather than the forum.
Do you have only the DLL’s or also the source code? I suspect only the DLLs which are NOT going to work on NETMF due to the bigger .NET Framework prerequisites. Which means that you would be on your own as far as writing the software to analyze the picture that the scanner would create and analyzing the fingerprint. This will be very difficult & time consuming for you and due to the amount of analysis required of the CPU you may not end up being satisfied with the speed. Now, if you happen to have the source code then your job would be much easier but still very time consuming.
If you get it working, please post your results here. Good luck!
No only the DLL’s I doubt they would provide the source code as they would be exploiting their algorithms.
GHI has sent me a suggestion.
This can be used http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8839
I can use this option for work for new clients but not old since that would mean scanning all images again.
If any one has a possible way which wouldn’t cost thousands using digital persona I would appreciate it.
USB scanners are low cost because they do not have any processing on-board. It is simple a scanner. There is a complex software on the PC that does the decoding. So, if you were to add this scanner to a device then you have to decode the image, which is very complex and maybe too much for small systems.