Can I use a bluetooth or wifi laser barcode scanner in Meteor

help
1

Hi,

I just started meteor development, so I’m still a newbie, please forgive me if I’m asking stupid questions.

I’m trying to make some kind of POS mobile system.
Scanning a barcode with the camera is already working.
But I don’t seem to find any package to communicate with the barcode scanner over bluetooth or wifi.

Any directions? Not feasible?

Thanks in advance,

Bram

2

It’s independent from Meteor, you should check for cordova plugins, as cordova is what Meteor is using to provide mobile apps.

3

I hoped somebody already did something similar with Meteor (cordova).
Don’t seem to find anything in Cordova support either.

Thanks anyway

Bram

4

If you have a bluetooth/wi-fi barcode scanner, and a tablet, then you do not need to do anything special to feed the data into a Meteor application. The scanner becomes a peripheral device, equivalent to typing the barcode into the tablet. If you want to write an app that calls the camera on a tablet/phone and uses that to scan barcodes, you need Cordova in order to call the relevant function in the Android/iOS API. Here is a tutorial involving making a mobile app with Cordova and Meteor: http://www.angular-meteor.com/tutorials/whatsapp/meteor/bootstrapping

5

Hi Roger,

Thanks, Yes, I’ve got the cordova barcode scanner plugin working.

So the barcode scanner is a keyboard then, how do I capture the complete string?
I tried with keydown or keypress event in an input field.
But then I only get only the first char of the bar code string.

Is it possible to capture the whole bar code string without the input field at once?
(Or better new thread?)

Thanks in advance,

Bram

6

Some act like a keyboard, some “paste” the text one character at a time. Here is a SO thread about it: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16296342/scan-barcode-into-a-specific-textbox
I have a lot of experience creating the barcodes but only a little reading them in. In general, if you have a barcode scanner that acts like a keyboard, the scan will only represent one “keypress” event, ie the trigger being pulled, and then all the text is buffered into the field. So you could track how fast it is coming and submit it when it stops.

In general, I would use the “input” event in JS, as it will track both entries from a keyboard/scanner and pastes from a scanner or anywhere else, and send those and/or store them for later use. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6458840/on-input-change-event

7

Thanks, Roger.

Step by step getting further.

Thanks,

Bram