hi alostpacket! the idea was that the phone could be used as a plug'n'play replacement for commercial barcode scanners. in most cases, and for the casual home user, it will probably be used as a keyboard wedge. when the scanner is used by another program on the PC it can be more useful / easier to automate processes when the data is sent over a serial port. for example, a lot of the programs that i write at work prompt the operator to scan something like a serial number and then wait for the scanned data to appear on the serial port before continuing on with the program.
the PC app that i am working on uses a .NET TcpListener to get data from the network. so on the phone side, the scanned barcode data would be sent by the equivalent of a .NET TcpClient to the PC...not sure how that works in Android yet. the user would specify the destination IP and port within the app on the phone. you are welcome to help if you like. i don't think i could get to the phone part until about a week from now.
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