Question

I’m looking for a postage scale that already has linux support (drivers, etc) for a shipping system that I’m working on. I’m planning to use Ubuntu 9.04, but I am willing to switch distro’s for compatibility.

Does anybody know of any scales that currently work? Is there an open source project that’s working on scale drivers or similar?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I use the 5lb stamps.com scale. You can pick it up for $10 if you sign up for an account with them and then cancel it.

To read from it in linux, get this script: http://gist.github.com/503896

Edit the script file to set the proper hidraw device path. You can find the path by running dmesg after you’ve plugged the scale in. You will see something like “/dev/hidraw2”.

After setting the hidraw path in the script, add execute permission and then run it as root:

chmod +x usbscale.pl

sudo ./usbscale.pl

Place an object on the scale and it will print the weight.