As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I’ve finally identified a hardware vendor that produces the quality fingerprint scanners that I was looking for. Digital Persona are one of the best known manufacturers in the industry, with their hardware and software drivers rapidly becoming the standard for the biometric software industry. Their popular U.are.U 4000 USB fingerprint scanner has recently been superseded by the newly designed U.are.U 4500 model and it is this model that I have settled on. I am in the process of integrating Time Clock MTS with this scanner, and in the short term at least, this and the 4000 model are going to be the only biometric devices that will work with Time Clock MTS.
A Digital Personal USB Finger Scanner
Currently Digital Persona bundles up the fingerprint scanner with some software that you can use to manage user accounts on your Windows PC and that will also manage your web passwords and so on. They currently have this bundle available at just US$69.95 which is an insanely good price considering how much it cost me for a single scanner for development purposes! You can purchase the scanners directly from the digital persona website. Please note that I am not affiliated with Digital Persona in any way, and do not currently sell their hardware so if you have any problems with the scanner then you’ll need to deal with them rather than with anyone at Timesheets MTS Software.
Stay tuned for a new version of Time Clock MTS that works with these fingerprint scanners very soon!
Update: quite a bit has changed since we wrote this entry more than five years ago. Of course Time Clock MTS has had fingerprint security for a long time. And second, Digital Persona seems to have under-gone a re-branding and no longer sells directly to consumers. If you wanted to buy a Digital Persona 4500 scanner to use with Time Clock MTS then we recommend you purchase from California PC. At the time this update was written (November 2014) it looks like a suitable fingerscanner could be purchased for under US$100.
