RE: Direct connect mag stripe reader

If you want Rube Goldberg try setting up incoming SMS messaging to an RPG application. That was truly fun.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pete Helgren
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 11:14 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Direct connect mag stripe reader

It was much worse when I started and then I had that "aha!" moment that said "Hey, this is just two web servers talking to each other..I KNOW this!".

Could have gone with something like HTTPAPI to do the communicating but basically hitting each timeclock's web page that presented the time clock data from the query to the page and returning it as json data was so simple I just did it that way. Sometimes a Rube Goldberg KISS approach is the best...

Pete Helgren
www.petesworkshop.com
GIAC Secure Software Programmer-Java

On 8/23/2013 9:20 AM, Matt Olson wrote:

Rube goldberg machine came to mind when you detailed this method :-)

Matt
________________________________________
From: Pete Helgren <pete@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 8:44 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Direct connect mag stripe reader

Mike,

It depends upon what the device is running. I use timeclocks from
Icontime and basically it runs Busybox (a very lightweight Linux
distro) http://www.icontime.com/index.php/products/automated-time-clocks/universal-time-clocks/rtc-1000-2-0-universal-time-clock.
I have a Java servlet on IBM i that goes out and polls the the clocks
and retrieves the data using a CGI program (so basically each clock
has a tiny web server). The CGI "program" is just a bash script.
It's all pretty easy.

So the first question would be how to query the device (it is a little
vague about it). It *might*even be running something like Busybox.
At that point, I could even share the scripts I use.

Pete Helgren
www.petesworkshop.com
GIAC Secure Software Programmer-Java

On 8/22/2013 9:38 PM, Mike Cunningham wrote:

Does anyone know of a way to direct connect an iSeries to a magnetic stripe card reader?

I found this device but it does not go into much detail on how to talk to it. Would I be able to use the sockets API to talk to this type of device?
http://www.computerwise.com/ethernet/ep310.html#terminal_emulation

I really do not want to get into having a windows system setup to collect the data and then try to get that up to the iSeries. I have used 5250 connected time clocks but that is a bit overkill for my need. Which is to just let students swipe a card to clock in/out of a location.

Or something a little more robust http://www.computerwise.com/time/ec305.htm and use F1 to clockin and F2 for clockout. This one would store internally and the FTP client in the iSeries could pull the data.

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