Hi,

       You would have to check with the manufacturer of the magnetic strip
reader for any api.  Usually stuff like that is hardware dependant.

Ken
---------------------------------

Bryan,

  There was an article in MAKE magazine vol. #1 about mag strip readers.
The article mentioned a GPL project called "stripesnoop".  The home page is
at http://stripesnoop.sourceforge.net/.  Hope that helps some.

       Lynn

if its anything like scanning barcodes, you don't really need an api, you
just need to know the format the reader presents the data in. For instance,
when we scan a barcode it is passed to my program on the scanner as plain
text that I then programmatically decode into its inherent information. This
is both for Human Readable and Non-Human readable barcodes.

Hi,

All of the magstripe readers that I have used with Pocket PCs are serial
devices.  For my own applications I use CFSerialIO, which is a free download
from my homepage.

Naturally, you need to know the data format that is used on the card
itself -- there are many possibilities, some standard and some "not."  I
have descriptions of most of the "standard" ones in my book (see below).

Dick

BTW, since you multiposted this, you may want to know about other devices
than Compact Framework.

IMO, useful magstripe readers output data using a serial connection, or are
a specialized USB HID device that DOES NOT emulate a keyboard wedge (Magtek
makes the only one that I know of that meets this requirement).  Keyboard
wedge devices send data to the current text or edit window.  Thus, you need
to add code in the (for example) keypress event for that window.  Keeping
focus to that window can be a painful experience, so that is why I do not
use them.

Dick