MSR605 Card Reader python interface and GUI
Contact: [email protected]
Legal Documentation: LICENSE (file) and also in some of the classes
PySerial for communication between the PC and MSR605 (https://github.com/pyserial/pyserial)
Tkinter for the GUI
The MSR605 is a card reader/writer, its writes to the standard magstripe cards that most people are used to using (Credit Cards, Debit Cards, pretty much any card with a colored stripe on the back, its usually black). I purchased mine on ebay. I choose to buy this card reader because it had good documentation online
So there are a few MSR605 projects online and there is a great programmer manual for the device (https://www.triades.net/downloads/MSR605%20Programmer's%20Manual.pdf). The only reason I actually created this project was because my parents wanted a points card at their business and I didn't want them to spend a large amount of money on it. I did successfully create the application and it has been working great for a few years now. I started this project in April 2015 and had thought it was ready to go but it had a few bugs and I left for work in May 2015 and wasn't able to access the device. I finished it in late August 2015 and thought I'd throw it on github cause the MSR605 projects I seen didn't have a GUI included with them. A nice GUI comes with the MSR605 device I got but all it does is read, write and erase cards.
So the files you guys will have will read, write and erase cards. There are also some other things it can do such as diagnostic tests on the device as well as lighting up the LED's. The cards can be stored in a database, I added this functionality cause I assumed anybody using this project would most likely want to store their cards.
You can take the backend and use it to build your own GUI, you can take what I have and modify it.
Just as an example for a points card, you could generate one or all of the tracks randomly, store those values in the database, hash and salt the generated values and put those generated values on the tracks (most magstripe cards have 3 tracks).
The Magstripe card tracks have an ISO Standard that you can follow if you want too. I have included a isoStandardDictionary class that contains a dictionary with all the allowed characters for each of the tracks.
I haven't implemented all the functionality that is in the programmers manual, such as raw read and raw write. I did not implement this because I was able to cover all the core functionality I needed and thought others would need. If you desire this functionality I can add it but it should not be too hard to implement yourself after reading the programmers manual
GUI.py - the graphical interface that allows you to control the MSR605
MSR605Test.py - this tests the devices different functions, it's pretty much tests all the functions that the device can perform
cardReader.py - the interface between python and the MSR605, this class sends the command over serial and returns any info requested
isoStandardDictionary.py - contains 2 dictionaries (track 2 and 3 have the same standard for what characters are allowed) and a function that tells you if a character is valid for a given track
cardReaderExceptions.py - The MSR605 provides feed back in the case errors arise, this information can be useful and this class contains exceptions for each of the functions the MSR605 can preform