[w0rd-driven]

In my previous life I worked on kiosks using POS equipment like this. Scanners are typically just keyboard interfaces. The barcodes are essentially very old school QR codes that actually type the information. Card swipers are the same to a degree. They read up to 3 levels of the magnetic strip and essentially type the card number and cvc into POS systems. Debugging these usually would involve opening up Notepad in Windows and watching it type the information.

[phjesusthatguy3]

The Symbol/Motorola/Zebra/whoever-owns-the-brand-this-month li2208 is cheap and can read a phone display. I think it can decode PDF417 (? The 2D barcode on the back of your driver's license) but Im not sure about QR

[w0rd-driven]

I think by default it handles pdf417 but you could enable a few other formats through configuration. QR seemed to be easily supported by even the cheapest models 6 or so years ago. It's like the scanner tech itself kinda stayed the same but what changed was the connectivity to the PC, moving from serial to serial-over-usb. At least that's what it looked like with the sample scanners I had access to.