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What
is the CueCat? |
| The CueCat is made by a company call
DigitalConvergence.:Com,
it's being promoted by RadioShack
as a new sales method. The CueCat is given out at your
local RadioShack as an item that you connect to your computer and
install software for. Once this software is installed it will
allow you to scan items (using the UPC or :C code in your Radio
Shack Catalog) that will lead you to an online web page that talks
about this item and gives you more info on it.
Example: If you purchase a Compaq printer and scan it's
barcode, this would then connect you to RadioShacks web page and show
information about the printer, and give you the option of purchasing
more ink and paper.
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What good is the CueCat
for? |
| The CueCat is basically a Bar-Code
Reader. Generally a Bar-Code reader cost between $100-$200, but
the CueCat is practically Free. For people and programmers
that need a barcode reader, it's much easier to get a low cost
CueCat at their local RadioShack then to go out and spend $100 -
$200 unless they need a heavier duty one for business purposes.
For example I personally have written a program that keeps track
of pine wood derby cars, and keeps track of the race
data. The cars are marked with a serial number and I use a
barcode reader to scan them. So I will now be placing
code into my program to support the CueCat so that way my customers
(mostly non-profit organizations) can use the CueCat as an alternative
to a more costly reader. |
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What
information does
the CueCat give off? |
| Every time you scan a barcode with
the CueCat it sends out a sting of data. This data is encoded
and contains a barcode identifier along with the barcode data it's
self. The encoding method that it gives out is a
modified method of BASE64 (aka MIME) encoding.
If you are only scanning a barcode that contains numbers then you
can use a simple reference chart to decode the number. If you
are scanning anything else that includes anything other then numbers
then you will need to know how the BASE64 encoding works.
The output of a CueCat for example is like this:
.C3nZC3nZC3nXC3nZCxvYDNn6.fGjX.Dhf2Cxr3E3bYDNT1C3a.
The output start's with a <ALT>-F10 Key combo (not shown
here).
Then you have three sections of data that are divided by periods.
The first section of data consists of the serial number of the
CueCat. The second part gives the barcode type. The third
section of data contains the actual bar-code number. The only
thing that still must be done is decoding the data that is given by the
CueCat. |
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Why a serial number? |
| You may ask why would the CueCat
give off a serial number. This is very simple, it's so DigitalConvergence
can track all the stuff you scan! That's correct
every item you scan something it's tracked on DigitalConvergence's computer
systems. That's how they make their money for the free
service! If you are interested in finding out how to disable the S/N from
being transmitted from your CueCat then I would recommend you check
out the following web-page.
http://24.8.193.241/1548/1548.htm
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