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I recently bought a MMSR Series Magstripe Card Reader, it has a USB interface and I have no idea how to configure it to read the information on the card.

The cards are pre programmed and seem to have a 10 digit ID, i am not sure what other information they contain.

I followed the manual that was provided with the machine but it only allowed me to install the program to configure the reader and nothing else.

My main question is how to configure this reader properly that will allow me read the 10 digit ID that is associated with it.

The reader is a Proline MSR-33-UB and will be connected to a C# windows form program running on a laptop with the reader attached by USB

In the configuration application it provides me various settings.

  • Interface

    -It gives me the option to choose from Keyboard, RS-232 and USB(I've left mine on USB)

  • InterCharacter Delay

    -It has Start Keyboard Setting and Start RS-232 Setting

  • Terminator, Which has options for Keyboard and RS-232

  • Magnetic Card

    • in this tab it has a 4 more tabs

      -Track Order
-Track Selection
-ID Character
-Data Format
  - This section contains 3 checkboxes
      - Track 2 Account No. Only
      - IBM Format 
      - Transmit LRC

  • Preamble & Postamble

  • General Parameter

and finally a transmit tab that just tests whether the card transmits data. I tested this with and without a keyboard plugged in and it only transmitted when the keyboard was unplugged.

After trying to test the reader myself all i could manage was the reader to display the date in a text box as well as it repeating the letter "a" across the screen.

Deduplicator
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Beckb06
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  • Did the manufacturer provide an API for this device? You need some sort of class structure to receive the transmitted data in a meaningful way. I would assume (RTM) there is some documentation regarding interfacing to the device. – Evan L Feb 07 '14 at 15:59
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    You might try configuring the reader to Keyboard. Then your program will just treat the input as if it came from the keyboard. Many of them will send a character at the beginning of the data and one at the end. For example: *1234567890; (The * represents the start of the data and the ; represents the end). In your code you just handle the normal keyboard events. – Chris Dunaway Feb 07 '14 at 16:18
  • Thanks for the quick replies, i managed to find a 3rd party program that did exactly what Chris said and it works perfectly! Thanks again for the help. – Beckb06 Feb 07 '14 at 16:33
  • @ChrisDunaway: I have the same problem, but before I can read the scanned data , then I need to set it states to "read states", Is there any java API to accomplish this? – Mohammad Fajar May 06 '14 at 21:33

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