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Coding4Fun Hardware Boneyard – Using the CueCat with .NET (2006)
- PatrickSamson 3y ago[dead]
- bombcar 3y agoCuëCats were amazing. We had so much fun playing with them and scanning barcodes even though we didn’t do much useful with it. I remember a home library program for the Mac that was probably inspired by the cuecat. It would add books to your library after doing an internet lookup for he information.
- dervjd 3y agoYou're probably thinking of Delicious Library (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2004/11/delicious-library/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2004/11/delicious-library/) - that was such a cool piece of Mac software. I think it worked with the CueCat, but you could also use your Mac's iSight camera as a barcode reader. Even had the satisfying "beep" when you scanned a barcode. Scanning a QR code with a smartphone camera is super commonplace now, but back in 2004 it felt so futuristic.
- dirtyhippiefree 3y agoWorking RadioSnack in Berkeley, we couldn’t give them away.
- sverona 3y agoIf you haven't read Jon Bois' piece on working at RadioShack you absolutely should. https://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy-stories https://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulog...
- dirtyhippiefree 3y agoYou’ve got questions? Yeah…so do they…
- ggdm 3y agoThe business model was to literally give them away. Whether humans wanted them or not, that’s another story. Thank you for your input.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoWhether humans wanted them or not, that’s another story. I don't think it's another story, I think it's the whole story.
- oceanghost 3y agoI bought half a dozen of these from Radioshack they were more or less giving them away after the fall. There were lots of library apps that sprung up where you could scan your DVDs barcodes, or CDs etc. I can't remember what hair brained idea I had for it.
- ggdm 3y agoBought wasn’t correct in that context as they were always free to the community and consumer. I agree with hare brained whole heartedly.
- oceanghost 3y agoI admit my memory on the subject is imperfect. :-)
- karaterobot 3y agoOne of the big purchasers of leftover CueCat inventory was Librarything. They still sell them (for $5 at the moment) on their store, and have built features to use them for cataloging and searching your books.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y agoLink: https://www.librarything.com/more/store/cuecat https://www.librarything.com/more/store/cuecat
- zoky 3y agoGiven that they were originally given away for free, this is essentially an ∞% return on investment, thus making CueCat the most successful startup in history…
- bellboy_tech 3y agoI'm holding my cuecat in hand with a PS/2 adapter thru a PS/2->USB adapter. Still works perfectly using Larry Wall's one-line decoder!!! Amazing ahead of it's time product, by a very very screwed up founder.
- twisteriffic 3y ago> by a very very screwed up founder. I thought I knew the guys story, but wow is that some powerful grifting. Dude sells crystals and... Voter fraud dowsing sticks? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Hutton_Pulitzer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Hutton_Pulitzer
- ggdm 3y agoOne founder was a little off to say the least.
- ggdm 3y agoNo. Screwed up by legal. Founders were super cool. Mostly.
- dale_glass 3y agoWhat did legal do?
- ggdm 3y agoSame thing they always do. Write letters. Crappy ones.
- breput 3y agoA maybe forgotten fact about the whole CueCat saga was that the hardware was given away for free, mainly at Radio Shack in the USA, with the expectation that the company would be able to recoup the costs by...um...I guess collecting user data and charging publishers to generate bar codes. Of course, people quickly reverse engineered the data format, as it was just a PS/2 format keyboard device, which caused the company to threaten to sue[0] anyone who distributed the software. Much fun was had for a few months skirting this until nearly everyone, other than a few people like book collectors, realized that having a UPC scanner wasn't that useful and the CueCats got stuffed into the junk drawers. Now everyone has a barcode scanner on their phone and it is no big deal, but at the time, it was a fun toy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat#Security_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat#Security_breach
- GauntletWizard 3y agoI've been writing a collection inventorying system for myself, in anticipation of the coming streampocalpyse (which could take several forms), and I've been frustrated and dismayed by the state of UPC Data sources, especially free ones. OpenLibrary is the one good source I've found. Any others?
- anonymousiam 3y agoI have a half dozen of them in a drawer somewhere. I never used the supplied software. There was a nice Linux driver here: http://linas.org/banned/cuecat/oss.lineo.com.cuecat.cuecat_driver.index.html http://linas.org/banned/cuecat/oss.lineo.com.cuecat.cuecat_d... I haven't used any of them for over 10 years. Most smartphones now have more capable barcode reader apps.
- no_wizard 3y agoIronically now that smartphones are a thing this kind of thing I would have thought would be more prevelant, but instead of barcodes I am imagining QR Codes
- jstarks 3y agoYou could also just cut a trace on the motherboard and it would type out the UPC codes unencoded.
- nirav72 3y agoI still have couple of these in a box somewhere. I recall they had a ps2 connector.
- phrop 3y agoWired Magazine gave away CueCats at one point, I still have an unopened on in the box. Along with 100 lbs or so of magazines
- ggdm 3y agoI’m at the Wired 30th anniversary event as I type this and they didn’t have one at their Gadget Lab installation. I didn’t have one with me, sadly.
- ggdm 3y agoCo-Founder of the project here here. AMA @ggdm
- midnitewarrior 3y agoYou founded CueCat?
- ravetcofx 3y agoWhat were some of the biggest challenges in the project? Technical, manufacturing, marketing?
- ggdm 3y agoCost reduction. We needed to make these for under $10 so we could give them away as part of our razor blade model. Google that-if you know, you know.
- CapstanRoller 3y agoDo you still have one? Did you hack it?
- ggdm 3y agoYes. Boxes of them. I hacked it because I previously wrote for 2600, Google that. Later I helped write for Make Magazine… makezine.com
- midnitewarrior 3y agoI still have my cuecat! :C
- eigenvalue 3y agoI had one of these and thought it was pretty cool to scan the ISBN barcodes on the back of my books and make a catalog of my books. That didn’t take very long and then I wondered what I would use it for and was very confused as a 13 year old what in the world the business model could be to keep them afloat, because it made no sense to me to give them away or charge so little for the device. I was similarly confused by the various toolbars you could install that would pay you to browse the web (which I hooked up to some mouse jiggling script to keep it working while I slept). I did get at least one check for $15 from that which seemed magical at the time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ggdm 3y agoIt was the razor blade model. It cost us under $10 per unit to make and we charged licenses for content creators to make their physical world items tie into digital content to interact with the brand new web world of 2000. One may also call this a chicken or the egg problem. Y2K was amazing.
- giantrobot 3y agoI had a PS/2 CueCat which IIRC required some hardware modification to use unlocked, at least early on. I stuck in it a drawer and never bothered with it again. The default functionality was useless. The thing I miss however is things like that old Amazon web service that. Icould look up book information for free. For a few years there were some really interesting free XML-RPC and SOAP web services that were relatively easy to plug into and access interesting services. I really miss those services and composability for mash-ups.
- MBCook 3y agoI don’t think it required a hack, I don’t remember that. However they did have a serial number built-in that the software would send to the retailer when you scanned things for tracking purposes. I think the hack was to disable that, it might’ve been as simple as cutting a single trace. (From the fog of my memory)
- breput 3y agoYeah, no hack required. The CueCat just outputted keyboard data via the PS/2 interface, which was the most common keyboard connection at the time, and with the correct 3rd party software it could be used to decode any UPC barcode without having to install the official spyware software.
- giantrobot 3y agoThat is likely what I am thinking of, it's been a long time and I was not super interested in it at the time. I got mine free from Radio Shack with that year's catalog (which was filled with CueCat barcodes).
- cf 3y agoDoes anyone remember how LibraryThing does (did?) sell CueCats and they are a really handy way to upload your book and music collection online https://www.librarything.com/more/store/cuecat https://www.librarything.com/more/store/cuecat
- jrmg 3y agoAmongst all the random detritus from 70 years of local industry, there’s basically always still a seller with a bunch of CueCats at every Silicon Valley Electronics Flea Market (https://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/ https://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/).
- drlava 3y agoThese were great. Our college IDs had a barcode on them for cafeteria charge swipes.! I set up a cuecat outside my dorm door where one could swipe their ID for access, the IDs swipes would be compared against an access list and a match triggered a mechanical door opener from a locked door. Lulz all round. This was before everyone was walking around with a cellphone camera where these barcodes were marginally more secure in 2000 but the campus switched from barcodes a few years later.
- ggdm 3y agoYou’re my people. Well done! We created Make Magazine and Maker Faire to celebrate this good behavior!
- gr33nq 3y agoI remember begging my parents to take me to a Radio Shack to get one of these when I was in second grade. The idea of being able to scan various items around the house was such a wild concept to me for some reason. Once we finally tracked one down, I scanned every book on my shelf into a trial copy of Winnebago Spectrum that I had obtained. It was the software suite that my elementary school's library ran off of, and I installed it on a Windows 2000 PC that my dad had passed down to me after upgrading the office computer. God knows how many hours I spent playing library with my younger sister and aimlessly scanning ISBNs - such simple times! Surprisingly I still have that same PS/2 CueCat in my drawer, though it hasn't been plugged in for at least fifteen years. I know many of us in this community tend to look back at the earlier days of the internet very fondly and feel the nostalgia hit strongly, and I think it's because of the innovations (or maybe gimmicks?) like these that were novel and groundbreaking in many ways. Off the top of my head right now, I can't recall anything in recent times as quirky as the CueCat that would have evoked a similar excitement and genuine intrigue to a child today like I was fortunate to have experienced twenty years ago. But then again, I'm sure back then there weren't many seven year olds hunting down library database software and messing around with it for fun - so maybe my perspective is an outlier...
- kotaKat 3y agoI ran Mandarin M3 at home as a kid (also matching my local school library), so you're not alone ;) I just checked and oh boy, I could spin it back up... https://www.mlasolutions.com/products/m3 https://www.mlasolutions.com/products/m3
- cyansmoker 3y agoRelated, to make the CueCat "speak English:" https://nexus.zteo.com/posts/sunday-hacking-cuecat-delicious-library/ https://nexus.zteo.com/posts/sunday-hacking-cuecat-delicious...
- Traubenfuchs 3y agoWhy do I keep reading about the CueCat multiple times per year? What makes this primitive gadget so enticing?
- ggdm 3y agoWe were a sign of the future of the web and where we sit today with smartphones and what is capable today. It’s a time capsule.