EV3 barcode scanner

Should be finishing my EV3 Alexa program… but not in the mood.

So I got a USB barcode scanner in front of me… hmm, I wonder…?

My Ubuntu linux laptop recognizes. HID device, a keyboard. Great, plug and play!

So does my EV3 running ev3dev:

[  538.808906] usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 6 using ohci-da8xx
[  538.972308] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=04b4, idProduct=0100
[  538.972383] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[  538.972425] usb 1-1.2: Product: USB Virtual PS2 Port    
[  538.972462] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Future            
[  539.040788] input: Future             USB Virtual PS2 Port     as /devices/platform/soc@1c00000/ohci-da8xx/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2:1.0/0003:04B4:0100.0001/input/input2
[  539.128526] hid-generic 0003:04B4:0100.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.00 Keyboard [Future             USB Virtual PS2 Port    ] on usb-ohci-da8xx-1.2/input0

So if this is a keyboard I can read it with input functions:

#! /usr/bin/env python3

# if you are running from ssh session invoke this script with 'brickrun'
from ev3dev2 .sound import Sound

sound = Sound()

while True:
    ucc = input('Scan a UCC: ')
    ucc = ucc.lower().strip().replace('\t','').replace('\n','')
    sound.speak(ucc)

Yes, it works. Just need to disable Brickman interface (first time I ran it the ‘keys’ read from from the scanner disabled my Wi-Fi connection). I can use print but the since the LCD is so small I prefer to use ‘speak’.

Now… what can I do with it?

Of course… identify LEGO sets!

So I found out that there are online databases of barcodes and some even offer webservices API. I asked a free trial key at “https://www.barcodelookup.com/api” and copy&pasted their python demo code… and it just works.

Code: https://github.com/JorgePe/ev3-barcode/blob/master/barcode02.py

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