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From: Richard on 10 Jul 2010 10:35
I need to help a friend that has a MacBook using a bluetooth based
barcode scanner. I know how to set this up on Windows, hopefully
someone here can guide me how to do the same in Mac OSX.

I understand that I need to use a Bluetooth app in the System
Preferences for the device discovery, pairing of devices and selection
of Bluetooth profile (here: Serial Port Profile).

The bar code scanner uses Bluetooth Serial Port Profile. So it will
send data to some sort of virtual com port (standard
9600bps-8N1-NoHandshakes). The data sent is simple text data of the
barcode.

1. Is there special setup that I need to do before using the virtual
com port?

2. Is there a serial terminal program that can communicate using
virtual com port (similar to HyperTerminal in Windows)?

What I would really like to do is having the text data received from
the bar code scanner being send to the system as if the user had typed
on the keyboard - often called keyboard wedge functionality. In Windows
I can setup so that data from a com port is sent to keyboard buffer by
using SerialKey Devices in Control Panel - Accessibility Options.

3. Is there a OSX program that can receive data from a virtual Com port
and send it to the keyboard buffer to make it act as keypresses?

TIA, Rif
From: JF Mezei on 10 Jul 2010 15:34
Richard wrote:
> I understand that I need to use a Bluetooth app in the System
> Preferences for the device discovery, pairing of devices and selection
> of Bluetooth profile (here: Serial Port Profile).

That is correct.


If you install the optional "developper" package on OS-X, you also get
some additional Bluetooth utilities

( Developper/applications/utilities/bluetooth ) There is a dianostic,
packet logger etc in there).

> 2. Is there a serial terminal program that can communicate using
> virtual com port (similar to HyperTerminal in Windows)?

Out of the box, no equivalent to Hyperterminal, BUT:

Open a "terminal" window (or Xterm), and there is the "cu" command.

cu -s 9600 -l /dev/name_of_device

You exit with a ~ followed by a slight pause followed by a .

man cu for more information

Many serial devices get configured with 2 entries in /dev. For the "cu"
utility (outgoing connection), you want to use the one whoae name begins
with "cu. "

for instance: (for a USB serial port)

cu.usbserial-FT5R5SKKA
tty.usbserial-FT5R5SKKA

Not sure how your serial device will be named in the /dev directory



> What I would really like to do is having the text data received from
> the bar code scanner being send to the system as if the user had typed
> on the keyboard - often called keyboard wedge functionality.

This must be possible, but I do not know the specifics of this. I do
know that my Sony phone is able to act as a remote control for my mac
via Bluetooth (controling mouse movement with the phone's joystick) and
sending keystrokes while using the handset's keyboard)

From: Rich Gray on 15 Jul 2010 00:56
JF Mezei wrote:
> Richard wrote:
>> I understand that I need to use a Bluetooth app in the System
>> Preferences for the device discovery, pairing of devices and selection
>> of Bluetooth profile (here: Serial Port Profile).
>
> That is correct.
>
>
> If you install the optional "developper" package on OS-X, you also get
> some additional Bluetooth utilities
>
> ( Developper/applications/utilities/bluetooth ) There is a dianostic,
> packet logger etc in there).
>
>> 2. Is there a serial terminal program that can communicate using
>> virtual com port (similar to HyperTerminal in Windows)?
>
> Out of the box, no equivalent to Hyperterminal, BUT:
>
> Open a "terminal" window (or Xterm), and there is the "cu" command.
>
> cu -s 9600 -l /dev/name_of_device
>
> You exit with a ~ followed by a slight pause followed by a .
>
> man cu for more information


There is also screen , a vt100 emulator. man screen for info.
Note that the two character sequence ctrl-A ctrl-\ is the exit
sequence.


- Rich
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