Barcode scanners or really any serial device
Well I finally figured out how to get Serial devices to work as virtual keyboards. Turns out there is a Userspace app called kbde that works great for this exact purpose. Took lots of googleing to find it but it let me breath new life into an old device.
This could also be used for taking signals from embedded computers (ardinos anyone?) and using them as HID-ish devices. The following command seems to work best for me:
sudo kbde –delay 3 -i /dev/ttyUSB0
A delay of 0 seems sort of unreliable from my limited testing and anyway, whats a few milliseconds between friends? The default delay of 300ms is sort of annoying though.
When installing, make sure to use the version from CVS. The latest release on sourceforge has some compatibility issues with Ubuntu 9.10.