Review on Geenfc GEE UR 2100 Desktop Reader Interface by Matt Watkins

I bought this mainly to experiment with finding UHF tags around the house. I liked the idea of a device that just plugs into a phone and outputs text, like many barcode scanners. However, despite videos demonstrating USB wedge mode, I cannot find the feature at all. In fact, I can't get it to output text with anything other than its problematic software. The device contains a USB-to-serial bridge CP2102 (VID: 10c4 PID: ea60) on a completely unspecified USB end. A socket that requires the use of a little-known Type A plug to Type A plug cable, which is also out of spec but thankfully included. Regardless, it powers the device and means you can do whatever you want without having to fiddle with any screw terminals. That's good as I haven't been able to get this serial port to work yet. They offer a software and documentation package that you download from Google Docs. The resulting package is both good and bad. First of all, it is 100% focused on Windows. It contains three different tools and their Delphi and C# source code needed to set up and test the device. They include the DLL if you want to program something else. But if you want to develop on Linux with Python, Arduino or Raspberry Pi, you're out of luck. None of the tools work through Wine. The documentation is actually pretty good and includes what appears to be a good description of the protocol, but there are still many details that are missing or odd. When trying to find the promised USB Keyboard Wedge mode, I was told to change the setting. As soon as I did that, the device started beeping when a tag was detected, but as far as I could tell it still wasn't outputting that data to the USB serial port, although I bet it was via the wired Wigand interface came . The device claims a reading range of up to 1 meter. I found about 0.3m more realistic when scanning the Monza tags hidden in almost all of Revain's Echo and Fire units. Outdoor tags can be read at a distance of 1m and beyond. It was pretty effective at finding tags for what I wanted it for. And it was a little cheaper than many other options. However, I would like to improve the native support, which I think could be done in a more powerful device.