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Re: [ALUG] music server hardware
by Martin 01 Oct '13

01 Oct '13

At the risk of teaching grandmother how to suck eggs, FLAC is a pretty cool format but is a lossless way to rip CDs so there's no loss of quality. Audiophiles tend to use this format and usually have expensive audio hardware and lots of storage space as it creates large files. If you don't have the expensive audio hardware I doubt you would be able to hear any difference in quality between FLAC and one of the lossy formats like ogg/mp3. The lossy formats create much smaller files. I would rip one track in various formats at various levels of quality then listen and compare before deciding which one is right for you. If you really want FLAC then you'll need more storage like an external USB drive. Those tiny green pcs just ooze cool and when my desktop pc gives up the ghost I will probably replace it with one of those, especially since a lot of distros now include arm versions. Cheers, Martin Sent from my Sony Xperia™ smartphone

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 4th October.
by Viperfang 01 Oct '13

01 Oct '13

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Re: [ALUG] Intercepting data from HID (keyboard wedge barcode scanner)
by Phil Ashby 28 Sep '13

28 Sep '13

On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 12:00:01 +0100 Mark wrote: > Well I'm making progress of sorts but can't find relevant > documentation anywhere, so far at least. USB implementers forum has complete documentation for keyboards and point of sale devices (scanners) here: http://www.usb.org/developers/hidpage/ In particular look at the 'HID Usage Tables 1.12' and 'HID Point of Sale Usage Tables 1.02'. You will also want to look at the Linux input event structure in /usr/include/linux/input.h, as these are what you see being emitted from the event device node. You might need to read the raw HID events from the scanner in order to determine the correct device state (from all the additional HID reports documented in POS 1.02). more details on raw HID devices in the kernel source tree: https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/tree/D… HTH, Phil.

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Intercepting data from HID (keyboard wedge barcode scanner)
by Peter Alcibiades 27 Sep '13

27 Sep '13

Is this any use? http://www.troz.net/rev/index.irev?category=Utility I used the barcode tester with a wedge some time back to check what exactly the barcode reader was picking up. I also used the Key coder app. I seem to remember having to frame the barcodes with * in Linux, and a different character in Windows, to have them register properly. You might need a copy of livecode to run this, which is free in the open source Community Edition now, from http://livecode.com/download/ Al

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Intercepting data from HID (keyboard wedge barcode scanner)
by Mark Rogers 27 Sep '13

27 Sep '13

I have a cheap barcode scanner that works well as a keyboard wedge - that is it appears as a keyboard and barcodes appear as though typed into the keyboard. I need to capture that data (and stop it appearing as keyboard data). In an ideal world it would appear as a TTY (serial) device instead. Is there any way I can do this or do I need a different scanner? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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West Norfolk meetings: second call
by MJ Ray 19 Sep '13

19 Sep '13

Chris Penston wrote [after my question]: > I would be happy to attend any meeting in West Norfolk. I am fairly flexible on days and times. I often feel a bit isolated up here in King's Lynn as meetups seem a long way to go and not have a beer! I've moved this to a new thread to see if anyone else is interested. Is there anyone else in West Norfolk interested in meeting up and do you have any preferences on days and/or times? I'm thinking one of the King's Lynn town centre bars on maybe the second Monday each month, but I might have overlooked some problem with that and I'm very open to venue suggestions because most places we've met before seem to have moved on. Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/

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Re: [ALUG] Thank you for the intro (+ GPG question)
by Ewan Slater 19 Sep '13

19 Sep '13

I'm in North Suffolk (Halesworth), so King's Lynn is a bit far for me. Ipswich, Norwich or even London (if work drags me that way) are pretty easy. Cheers, Ewan On 16 September 2013 17:57, David Crisp <dave(a)goldeneyes.org.uk> wrote: > On 15 Sep 2013, at 20:42, Chris Penston <chris.penston(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> On 15 September 2013 20:30, MJ Ray <mjr(a)phonecoop.coop> wrote: >> >>> >>> I'm willing to sign keys after meeting people a few times and/or other >>> corroboration, but I seem to spend most of my time in West Norfolk, >>> Cambridgeshire or London these days. Are people interested in a >>> meeting over this side and what day of the month? >> >> I would be happy to attend any meeting in West Norfolk. I am fairly >> flexible on days and times. I often feel a bit isolated up here in King's >> Lynn as meetups seem a long way to go and not have a beer! >> > > I'm in south Suffolk, so I'm afraid King's Lynn is a bit far for me to travel on a school night unless I take the day off work -- which I don't mind doing if necessary, but if that's where it's going to be I'd rather it was during the day on a Saturday if at all possible. > > Dave. > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! >

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Thank you for the intro
by Bob 19 Sep '13

19 Sep '13

Hello Mick Thanks for the contact. I was hoping to eventually meet up with 'real people' as email is brilliant for info transfer but, to me, human contact is much more preferable. I do find that my friends have confidence in what I tell them and when I say Linux is the way forward they seem to accept it. I start them off with a dual boot system making them select Windows if they really want it otherwise it's auto boot taking them straight into Mint. I have converted 4 so far and I'm expecting a few more in the near future. I take your point on the Skype problem and will just have to stay with MS for that......unless anyone knows different. Is there another video platform that I don't know about? Unable to decode/read your attachment (signature.asc) pls advise program/software for that. One other problem I have a red cross in the update manager list in the system tray advising 'could not refresh list of packages'. So presumably I'm not totally up to date. Any advice would be appreciated. If I have contravened any protocol in my response please let me know. Thanks bfn Bob -- Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

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Re: [ALUG] Intercepting data from HID (keyboard wedge barcode scanner)
by Phil Ashby 19 Sep '13

19 Sep '13

On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 12:00:01 +0100 Mark Rogers <mark(a)quarella.co.uk> wrote: > I have a cheap barcode scanner that works well as a keyboard wedge - > that is it appears as a keyboard and barcodes appear as though typed > into the keyboard. > > I need to capture that data (and stop it appearing as keyboard data). > In an ideal world it would appear as a TTY (serial) device instead. > > Is there any way I can do this or do I need a different scanner? You can stop the default Xorg HID input driver (evdev) from using it as a keyboard: http://askubuntu.com/questions/17603/how-to-get-xorg-to-ignore-certain-inpu… Then you need to read the key press events from the /dev/input/eventX device node and possibly translate into a virtual terminal device (pty) for the application to read. There are useful symbolic links in the /dev/input hierarchy that make it easier to find your device, and reading events is this trivial (I was debugging a weird keyboard when I wrote this code): // From kernel docs: // https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/input/input.txt #include <stdio.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <linux/input.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { struct input_event evt; int fd; char *dev = "/dev/input/event5"; if (argc>1) dev = argv[1]; if((fd = open(dev, O_RDONLY))<0) { perror("opening device"); return 1; } while(read(fd, &evt, sizeof(evt))==sizeof(evt)) { printf("type=%d code=%d value=%d (0x%08x)\n", evt.type, evt.code, evt.value, evt.value); } close(fd); return 0; } Sending to the chosen application may be trickier: depends if it can be persuaded to read from a network connection or named pipe (easy), or if it needs a real terminal node, in which case openpty() and friends will be needed to fool the app into thinking it's talking to a serial port. Phil.

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Touch screen support
by Mark Rogers 18 Sep '13

18 Sep '13

I have a web-based application running on a relatively low spec Ubuntu box (it was originally set up as a server install, but Gnome (I think [*]) was added with Firefox). They want to do away with keyboard and mouse so that means a touch screen. Any experience/suggestions/recommendations? Most of the interface is click only (a few elements are hover but they're not critical). There is the need to login so that'll need a pop-up keyboard of some kind, although we'd also like to look at barcode scanning support (all staff have a swipe card with barcode on it and that could bypass the keyboard-based login). I wouldn't rule out a standalone all-in-one desktop PC with touch screen acting as a client to the existing box (which goes back to being headless). Cost may be prohibitive though. [*] How do I check via SSH what desktop manager was installed? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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