Hi  Nguyen;

   Does the BarCode vendor supply a DLL that you could use to interface to that device?

Regards ... Chris

Chris is correct:  you absolutely need a way to interface with the device. Most barcode scanners will have this already set up and documented, so you will know how to call the functions required to interact with the device.

If the device reads a stream of test to the COM port, you can access the READ that way, as well.

From a previous post by Chris:

Hi Nguyen,

I am using generic USB barcode scanners and when the user has specific window opened, the window key event captures the data to an instance variable. As each character comes from the scanner, the key event fires and the KeyDown function checks the characters. I am using barcode 39 and the data should only be upper case alpha and numeric characters. As the characters are appended to the instance variable, the code in the event looks for the enter key from the scanner to indicate the end of the scan and then it will valid the data in the instance variable.

This is not the most common way to use barcode scanners with PB, but it works for me. If you are interested, I can provide the key event code.

Another method would be to use some type of data wedge software, but this is an extra expense.

Chris