Compatibility of APC Biometric FingerPrint?

Hello guys!

I'm developing a project that uses a biometric reader. First, I'm trying to make the reader recognizable by the OS. First, I'm using Ubuntu, but the final system will run a embedded system (maybe Emdebbian or a generic Linux version).

I run lsusb in the terminal, and I found the following line:

08ff:5731 Authentec, Inc. AES3500 TruePrint Sensor

I planned to use libfprint, but the driver isn't avaliable at the moment:

"Authentec AES3500: This is found in the Samsung X30 laptop. Tobias Wolf is working on a driver (see the mailing list). This is being tracked ing bug:10"

Anyone know if another driver is avaliable, if the reader is compatible with Linux, or if I must buy another reader? :(

Great question! Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to it... :-( I know that if I could get the fp reader on my attorney's HP tablet to work on Linux, I might stand a chance to wean him away from Windoze! Let us know what you find in your search.

As for your purposes, if you plan on using an FP reader on an embedded system, then you should look for a supported device that can run on your target system, and do your development and testing with that device, and not wait for someone to finish a kernel driver for a device that is not currently supported.

All that aside, what distribution+version+kernel are you using? Or are going to use on the embedded system? The current release of RHEL 6 (kernel 2.6.32) does support a variety of fingerprint readers, but I don't know which ones.

Well, after a long day of searches, I can't find good news...
I tried to contact Tobias Wolf, to ask how the driver development was going on. The reply of the e-mail was discouraging...

"I don’t know why my name is listed there. I never announced that I plan
to work on that device. I merely posted to the mailing list and when
someone asked me to provide a USB log I posted it."

After that, I continue my journey... I found some info in that page, but the project seemingly to be descontinued, after the start of libfprint. The last update was in 2006... not much encouraging... libfprint last "stable" version was in 2008 (quoted stable because the version was 0.0.6).

Continuing, I've found a type of tutorial in the following link. Here, the guy uses the reader (it's the same model that I have) in a OpenWrt (I don't know what it is)... the article have a driver download, but I couldn't compile or run the driver. Apparently the system it's a MIPS.

Well, about my system, I'm using a Ubuntu 10.04 x86, but the project will run on a ARM9 board, that will run maybe an Endebian or maybe a custom build of Linux... I still don't know. (I tried, but I can't escape of the embedded systems... hahahaha) I plan to use fprint for the biometric handling, SDL for the interface (yes, the system have a little LCD screen) and SQLite for store the data.

OpenWRT is an open source router kernel, and most routers that it can run on use MIPS-based processors (Linksys wrt54g for example). I also run ARM chips with Debian Etch (2.6.24 kernel) on some embedded systems for which I write software. Unless I have such a device in hand, I cannot say for sure if current Linux kernels and support software will work with it. :-(

I'll continue my journey... I read about the BioAPI, that seems to be very interesting. Although the last release was in 2007, the project appears to be active. I'll buy a Digital Persona fingerprint reader to make some tests... let's see what happens.

Hello there!

In the last days I make some progress. I joined in the mail list of the project fprint, and now I'm trying to develop the driver with other member, named Juvenn Woo. He showed that the project isn't inactive as I thinked.

The official repository in sourceforge is outdated, but in this repository, we can check the actual development. The actual version of the lib is the 0.3.0. In the official repository, the last stable version is 0.0.6 (from late 2008) and the last unstable version is 0.1.0-pre.

I'll continue the work, and posting any news.