Projects: the Early Years

The first projects made with the first versions of the FingerChip -you will also find the simple demonstration units described in the product pages-.

The first public appearance of the FingerChip was at the CTST '97 in Miami. Following our success at this conference, end of 1997 marked the beginning of third-party projects.

I'm afraid that most of the links are not working anymore, that's too old.

FCDEMO3 was demonstrated at the CTST '98 in Washington, DC. Three working authentication software packages were presented: Cogent Systems, AST and The Phoenix Group, as well as the following demonstrations:

• HP OB3000 laptop with integrated FingerChip + logon from Cogent. This was the very first laptop prototype with a built-in fingerprint reader.

• A Point Of Sale (POS) Ascom Twin 10 with integrated FingerChip. Demo was able to enroll someone on a smart card, and perform recognition using the AST software. Also presented at Cartes '98 on the Oberthur Oscard booth.

• The FingerChip was connected to the ColdFire (Motorola), essentially to overcome the PC's parallel port interface speed problem and also to show how easy it is to connect the sensor to a microprocessor.
• It was also the very first demonstration of reconstruction on the fly.

• Labcal (Canada): smart card reader + fingerprint reader

• Mouse prototype for Cezam

• French Publiphone

• Bergdata (Germany, produced by Topsys) PCI & ISA interfaces

The Paymate was a very small portable device with Bluetooth for wireless communication, on-board fingerprint recognition and smart card reader in order to perform payment transactions.

The FingerChip was also used as a pointing device for navigation.

• Hopkins Imaging (USA): ISA & PC104 interface (became Salt Lake Digital Imaging later)

GEZMICRO-6T was a tiny stand-alone module able to enroll and verify, using the Motorola DSP56309 digital signal processor to recognize the slices "on the fly". (was www.gezmicro.com : no more website).

FCSWEEP01 -the Sweepee- was the first USB demonstration unit. It was designed by SCM.

Bergdata

Bergdata (Germany) released Biogate, a PCI/ISA fingerprint reader with associated logon software.

Bergdata also released:

• a keyboard prototype made by Cherry
• a stand-alone module using an Hyperstone processor

• Alien projets showed a stand-alone fingerprint reader.

• Cezam (France) released a mouse prototype...

• ... followed by the product version.

• Chicony (Taiwan) made a keyboard prototype.

• CASC (Taiwan) made a parallel port interface.