Unsupported devices

From fprint project

This page lists devices that are currently unsupported by libfprint, which we'd like to support in future. Some of these would benefit from donations so that we can purchase the devices.

1 UPEK TouchStrip device variant
2 UPEK devices in Sony laptops
3 Sunplus 895
4 Samsung ID Mouse
5 Authentec AES3400
6 Authentec AES3500
7 Magictec FIN002
8 Futronic FS80/FS82
9 Misc devices
10 Useful links

[edit] UPEK TouchStrip device variant

The upekts driver supports UPEK TouchStrip devices with USB ID's 0483:2016 which are found in many devices. However, some newer ThinkPads are shipping with devices with a different ID (147e:2016). You might assume that these are a newer version of the device, however UPEKs own Eikon range ship with the "old" ID's, so the difference is not clear. Nevertheless, upekts does not support the 147e variant.

It seems that UPEK's current Linux offerings do not support this device either. Reverse engineering of the windows driver is necessary. I now have one of these devices in my possession, I will post results when I have had a chance to look at it.

Support for this device is being tracked in bug:9.

[edit] UPEK devices in Sony laptops

UPEK confirms that even though Sony laptops include a 0483:2016 scanner (which would otherwise be supported by upekts), the Sony version has a custom firmware designed to prevent any non-Sony software interacting with the device. Unfortunately they are successful and fprint, ThinkFinger and UPEK's own Linux drivers do not work with the fingerprint scanners in Sony laptops.

[edit] Sunplus 895

There are a surge of cheap fingerprint readers on ebay, and by tracing a few product names that can be seen on images, I think they are all based on the Sunplus 895 chip. Gerald Klaver has some information. In addition to funds and time to reverse engineer this, it appears that some extra work might be needed. It appears that this device sits behind a usb-serial converter, which we first need to write a kernel driver for, and secondly, fprint would need a bit of rearchitecting as it presently makes the assumption that all devices should be accessed using libusb.

[edit] Samsung ID Mouse

This was probably one of the first consumer fingerprint scanning devices and is hard to get hold of nowadays. There is a driver present in the Linux kernel for this device. It also presents an interesting challenge, as it does not offer any finger detection whatsoever: it is up to the software to determine when a finger has been placed on the sensor, through image analysis alone.

[edit] Authentec AES3400

Gerald Klaver has some information. Need one of these devices to work on. These are available standalone in the APC biopod devices. David Z's udrv driver looks like a good model (GK says its an AES4000 driver, but I don't see anything that suggests that is the case...)

[edit] 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 in bug:10

[edit] Magictec FIN002

The FIN002 appears to be manufactured by magictec.com.tw. Support for this device is being tracked on bug:11.

[edit] Futronic FS80/FS82

Biomark.org.ru has a driver for this, mostly closed source. This video shows some nice image quality and that their software can do enrollment/verification (but those parts are closed). If their open source part does not contain all the info we need to get images from such devices, it should be quite easy to reverse engineer the device through bus traffic analysis while running their software.

The FS82 is the FS80 with a smart card reader.

[edit] Misc devices

Here are some other devices on the consumer market. These should be researched before converting into their own sections above (e.g. which chipset/scanner are they based on?).