Earlier I mentioned the CompactFlash RFID Reader Card by Socket Communications. After the Mobile Bristol Toolkit this device was my second choice. It’s shipping with a demo application to read and write tags and SocketScan software sending virtual keystrokes (called wedge software) to any active application on the Pocket PC.

The Mobile Bristol toolkit was my first choice because of the nice integration with reader and the application. Sending virtual keystrokes is not such a tidy solution, but it does the trick.

Before rushing out to order the Socket reader there is another bump to take. The SocketScan software does not automatically recognise RFID tags in range. The user will have to assign a hardware button to a small application doing the actual scan. This can be any PDA’s hardware buttons. Another option is the Socket Trigger software displaying a small window that is always on top. This window can be tapped to activate the scanner. The trigger software is not such an esthetic solution, but assigning a hardware button will do.

Most of the Flash players however disable the hardware buttons completely or allow the user to remap them to keyboard keys. In fact, all of the 3rd party applications mentioned in the PocketPCMag article as well as the Mobile Bristol Toolkit make Windows functionality for the hardware buttons useless. A big problem, because this renders the SocketScan software and thus the Socket RFID Reader useless!

Fortunately the Standalone Flash Player by Adobe itself is acting like a normal Pocket PC application and does not disable the hardware buttons. It’s the Flash Player 6 though, but for my purposes this is just fine. The recently released mdm ZINC V2 Pocket PC player is able to create standalone Flash projectors and is using the latest version Flash Player 7 for Pocket PC. This application also doesn’t harm normal hardware button assignments. Additionally it comes with a lot of extra Fscommands to extend functionality. But because creating programs for it with the Windows application is quite a workaround, and the Adobe Flash Player will just load ordinary .swf files I did not go for Zinc. Its price tag is also a con.

The SocketScan wedge software allows you to create a prefix and a suffix around the tag’s data when sending it as virtual keystrokes. I chose to wrap it in ‘(‘ and ‘)’ characters, for example: (4313750134). With a Flash class listening to keypresses the start and end character can be recognised and the actual tag ID can be used as parameter in other methods.