How to access data from a card reader in Clinicea
Card readers cannot be accessed via the browser most of the times. There are 2 workarounds to it
Magnetic card reader upto Track 3.
You can check what info your specific card reader provides, by doing the following
a. Open a notepad
b. put your mouse cursor on it
c. connect your card reader to the computer via USB
d. swipe a card in your card reader
e. your notepad should have some data appearing on it. The data you can see is what can be read from the card by your card reader, without the assistance of any proprietary desktop specific library. This same data can then be read by us too via the browser.
Create a ActiveX DLL or extension to run on your browser
This is a legacy way to access your computers port and tries to breach past security. It is not recommended at all and is rarely seen in practise nowadays.
Most card readers come with their own desktop DLL i.e., to interface with them you need a desktop application. No web application running in a browser can have access to the USB port your card reader is sending data too.
We are aware of a workaround solutions to access the card reader via the web browser, but it requires modifying the registry and installation of a console app on the specific computer where the card reader is to be used. We can interface with the solution provider to make this work for you and charges for the same needs to be paid to the 3rd party company involved in setting this up for your local computer. However we repeat, accessing card readers via the browser is not supported and out of the box possible for most card readers currently. This is not a Clinicea limitation, it’s the way browsers provide the Chinese wall between your computer’s hardware ports and the software running from the internet.
Magnetic card reader upto Track 3.
You can check what info your specific card reader provides, by doing the following
a. Open a notepad
b. put your mouse cursor on it
c. connect your card reader to the computer via USB
d. swipe a card in your card reader
e. your notepad should have some data appearing on it. The data you can see is what can be read from the card by your card reader, without the assistance of any proprietary desktop specific library. This same data can then be read by us too via the browser.
Create a ActiveX DLL or extension to run on your browser
This is a legacy way to access your computers port and tries to breach past security. It is not recommended at all and is rarely seen in practise nowadays.
Most card readers come with their own desktop DLL i.e., to interface with them you need a desktop application. No web application running in a browser can have access to the USB port your card reader is sending data too.
We are aware of a workaround solutions to access the card reader via the web browser, but it requires modifying the registry and installation of a console app on the specific computer where the card reader is to be used. We can interface with the solution provider to make this work for you and charges for the same needs to be paid to the 3rd party company involved in setting this up for your local computer. However we repeat, accessing card readers via the browser is not supported and out of the box possible for most card readers currently. This is not a Clinicea limitation, it’s the way browsers provide the Chinese wall between your computer’s hardware ports and the software running from the internet.
Updated on: 14/06/2023
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