I have released instructions and code for connecting a magnetic stripe reader to a computer using USB. These are an answer to a common problem that people wanting to get into the magstripe reading scene face: a gameport or parallel port is required for interfacing with a magstripe reader and many computers these days don’t have either.
The project that got me interested in reading magstripes is Stripe Snoop. I highly recommend it if you’re interesting in finding out what information is encoded on magnetic stripes, such as those on credit cards, debit cards, hotel access cards, etc.
I couldn’t have done the project without Dean Camera’s help. He created the MyUSB library that the project uses to do the USB communication. The library is GPLed, which is why I used it instead of the Atmel-provided library, which has a much more restrictive license.
