GEE-UR-2100 Desktop Uhf RFID Reader Writer USB/ RS232 Interface

I purchased this mostly to experiment with finding UHF tags throughout the house. I really liked the idea of a device that I could just plug into a phone and get the text out, like with many barcode scanners. However, despite the videos showing a USB wedge mode, I cannot find this feature at all. Indeed, I'm unable to get it to output text through anything but its problematic software.The device includes a CP2102 USB-to-Serial bridge (VID:10c4 PID:ea60) on the end of a totally against-spec USB Type-A receptacle that requires the use of the obscure Type-A Plug to Type-A Plug cable that is also against spec but, fortunately, included. Despite that, it powers the device and means that you do much of everything you want to do without having to mess with any of the screw terminals. This is good, since I haven't been able to get that serial port to work, so far.They offer a software and documentation package that you download from Google Docs. This resulting package is both good and bad. First of all, it is 100% Windows-focused. It include three different tools and their source in Delphi and C# that are needed to configure and test the device. They include a DLL if you want to program in something else. But if you'd like to develop in Python or Arduino or Raspberry Pi in Linux you're out of luck. None of the tools function easily via Wine.The documentation is actually fairly good, and includes what appears to be a good protocol description, but there's still a lot of detail that is missing or strange. While trying to find the promised USB Keyboard Wedge mode, I was told to change a setting. Once I had done that, the device began to beep upon detecting a tag, but as far as I could tell, it still wasn't outputting that data to the USB serial port, although I bet it was going down the wigand wire interface.The device claims up to a 1m read-distance. I've found about .3m is more realistic in scanning the Monza tags hidden in nearly all Amazon Echo and Fire devices. Tags in free-air can be read at 1m and beyond.It was effective in some way with finding tags, which is largely what I wanted it for. And was quite a bit cheaper than many of the other options. Still, I would have liked better support for embedded work, which I think I would have gotten in a more capable device.