Version Differences for Linux - Opticon Technical Support Portal

Most of Opticon's scanners can be configured to transmit data as USB keyboards. Since the Linux kernel provides good support for USB keyboards, this means that Opticon's scanners work very well under Linux in this mode.

==USB Serial Drivers==

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There appears to be a serial driver in the mainline Linux 2.6 kernel which provides support for our 1D products as TTY devices in Linux. It was written by a developer at Novell (not by Opticon) originally for the SUSE distribution. It is also a part of the Ubuntu distribution, at least as of Karmic Koala. The driver appears to only support our 1D products which use the 0009 device ID with our vendor ID. Devices which use the 0002 device ID do not appear to have a driver. When you plug one of our 1D products in over USB, the serial driver will mount it in /dev/ttyUSBx depending on how many USB serial devices are mounted. At that point you should be able to treat it like a serial TTY.

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There are two ways that Opticon's devices can be accessed in Linux while in USB-VCP. Our 1D devices have a driver that provides good support for serial communication. As well, our 2D products use a generic CDC/ACM driver for serial communication. Since this is also well-supported in Linux, all of our products are well-supported.

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The typical method for accessing our 1D products is to open the /dev/ttyUSB# file, where the # is a number, starting from 0 and counting up. Our 2D products are accessed through a similar device file, with the exception that since they use the CDC drivers they are accessed through /dev/ttyACM#.

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A quick method for testing data transmission is to open the file corresponding to your device with the "cat" utility, then scanning some barcodes. For example, if your 1D scanner is the only USB-VCP device on the system, it can be accessed by typing "cat /dev/ttyUSB0" into the terminal. Depending on your level of permissions, you may need to be root to do this.

 Most of Opticon's scanners can be configured to transmit data as USB keyboards. Since the Linux kernel provides good support for USB keyboards, this means that Opticon's scanners work very well under Linux in this mode.
 ==USB Serial Drivers==
-								There appears to be a serial driver in the mainline Linux 2.6 kernel which provides support for our 1D products as TTY devices in Linux. It was written by a developer at Novell (not by Opticon) originally for the SUSE distribution. It is also a part of the Ubuntu distribution, at least as of Karmic Koala.  The driver appears to only support our 1D products which use the 0009 device ID with our vendor ID. Devices which use the 0002 device ID do not appear to have a driver.  When you plug one of our 1D products in over USB, the serial driver will mount it in /dev/ttyUSBx depending on how many USB serial devices are mounted. At that point you should be able to treat it like a serial TTY.
+								There are two ways that Opticon's devices can be accessed in Linux while in USB-VCP. Our 1D devices have a driver that provides good support for serial communication. As well, our 2D products use a generic CDC/ACM driver for serial communication. Since this is also well-supported in Linux, all of our products are well-supported.
 								The typical method for accessing our 1D products is to open the /dev/ttyUSB# file, where the # is a number, starting from 0 and counting up. Our 2D products are accessed through a similar device file, with the exception that since they use the CDC drivers they are accessed through /dev/ttyACM#.
 								A quick method for testing data transmission is to open the file corresponding to your device with the "cat" utility, then scanning some barcodes. For example, if your 1D scanner is the only USB-VCP device on the system, it can be accessed by typing "cat /dev/ttyUSB0" into the terminal. Depending on your level of permissions, you may need to be root to do this.