I have a problem with a barcode scanner. It came with a USB Cable but in the manual it says that it can do RS232 communication. The modes it can operate are: Keyboard Wedge, which works fine but I hate it, and Serial (RS232) which is what I want but does not work for me: When ever I switch the scanner to Serial mode, it correctly responds (with the success beep) and stops sending the scans like a keyboard (so far so good). But the problem is that I dont know where it sends the scans when it operates in serial mode. Its cable is USB only, so how can I capture the scans in serial mode? I know there are programs that emulate a serial port (e.g I use com2com and com2tcp for other projects), but I cannot find something that reads a USB port and forwards the data through an emulated Serial port. What it seems I need is the reverse of a usual USB to Serial converter but in software(since my pc does not have a serial port): a program that can take the input from a USB connected device, and make it available to a program listening to a serial port.
Any suggestions?
UPDATE:
- Found the model: is a ZQ-LS6000. Cannot find any kind of drivers
though - I tried to make it work on Linux with a number of usbserial drivers (ftdi, pl2303, keyspan and the generic driver). None works.
lsusb reports the VendorId as "Xenta" – vendorID=1d57 (xenta),
productId=001c – but it didnt help in the search for a driver.
Best Answer
Speculation below.
Most of the scanners I deal with (Metrologic & Symbol) will ship a code-book that lists every possible configuration code the scanner can take. Those code-books are fairly general for the model scanner. There can be many different models mainly: USB Cable, Serial, Keyboard Wedge.
Those configuration books/sheets will have settings for USB, Keyboard Wedge, & Serial regardless of what type they support.
I generally deal with more Metrologic scanners than symbols, but I know on Metrologic brands, if I had a bad cable that was USB and wanted to replace it with a RS232 cable, it would not work. The internals of the USB scanner don't support RS232.
It is in the book, and that part could be confusing, but in searching around I can't find any mention of that scanner being sold in a RS232 mode.
The price also being so low, compared to a Metrologic or a Symbol scanner leads me to believe it's a re-brand.
The company AZTPOS has a contact number you might try them.
What above answer mentions might work for you, but you might end up needing to buy a true serial scanner.