Installation of Microvision Flic barcode scanner on Linux

Use Microvision Flic  Laser Barcode Scanner to catalog your Library collection. Just scan barcodes, no typing needed

Installation instructions

These instructions are for Debian based operating systems (like Ubuntu), but the procedure should be quite similar on any Linux system.
Before using this software you should reset your barcode scanner to factory defaults by scanning the barcode in the user manual. Some of the non-default settings available on the scanner are (not yet?) supported by this software.

• Download the latest source
• open a terminal
• unpack the downloaded file to any directory you like

tar zxvf FlicServ.tar.gz

• Make sure the two Perl programs are runnable

sudo chmod 755 FlicServ pop

• Install the required Perl modules and applications

sudo apt-get install libdevice-serialport-perl libthreads-perl  

libthreads-shared-perl xautomation

• Go ahead and add a global shortcut for the pop application. If you don't know how to do this follow the example in Adding universal shortcuts in ubuntu/gnome but add a shortcut to /path/to/pop instead of /usr/bin/emacs 

Tethered use

This has been tested with the serial cable that comes with the Flic and also the serial cable connected via a R232-USB adapter, but any cable from Microvision should work.

• First find out which port the scanner is connected to for example /dev/ttyUSB0. I will use /dev/ttyUSB0 in all of the examples from now on. Just switch out /dev/ttyUSB0 with whatever port your scanner is connected to.
• Open a terminal
• Start the application

./FlicServ /dev/ttyUSB0

• Start scanning barcodes. Every time you scan a code you should see the text

pushed xxxxxxxxx

• in the terminal where xxxxxxxxx is the barcode you scanned.
• You can also disconnect the barcode scanner from the cable, go away and scan a whole bunch of barcodes, come back and reconnect the scanner. All of the scanned codes should be pushed automatically and the scanner gives you a little blipblipblip to let you know that it's memory is empty.
• Now open a text document in your editor of choice and hit the global shortcut key you previously added. The first barcode you scanned should now be inserted.
• The terminal should now show the text

poped xxxxxxxxx

• This can be repeated as many times as you needed.
• Pushing and poping can be done in any order, at any time.

--noserver

If you add the --noserver switch when starting the application the application will automatically pop barcodes as soon as you scan them.

--linefeed

If you add the --linefeed switch when starting the application the software will simulate pressing enter after a barcode is poped. --linefeed works both in --noserver and regular mode.