Griaule Biometrics

To use U.are.U 4500 with Fingerprint SDK on 32-bit or 64-bit Windows, follow these steps:

1. Don't install Fingercap driver. If you have done, uninstall it. Download and install the latest Manufacturer's driver from Digital Persona site. (The current version tested was 1.4.0.1): http://www.digitalpersona.com/Biometrics/SDK-Products/One-Touch-Software-Development-Kits-(SDKs)/

2. Plug the U.are.U 4500 fingerprint reader into your computer and install it with the driver installed in the previous step.

3. Check in Device Manager if the figerprint reader is installed with Digital Persona driver.

4. Download and install Fingerprint SDK from our Download page. Restart your computer.

5. Run our Demo program located in the bin folder where the SDK was installed.

6. Place your finger on the reader and see it in action.

Please, refer to this KB: http://www.griaulebiometrics.com/page/kb/u_are_u_4500

 

 

You just need to follow these steps:

1. See if your fingerprint reader model is supported by our SDK.

2. Download and install Fingercap 2.0 : Download Fingercap

3. On device manager, find your fingerprint reader, and associate it with our fingercap driver.

When the sdk was first released, GrTools had some bugs like:

- Fail on initialize (it launched an access violation exception).
- Sometimes it could not retrieve diagnostics information.
- Even after the sdk was closed, it stayed in memory consuming processing.

All these bugs have already been fixed. Downloading and installing the sdk again should fix it.
The link for download it is:
Download Fingerprint SDK 2009

No, an invalid license error will appear. Fingerprint SDK 2009 requires its own licenses, which can be acquired in the following link:
Buy licenses

Yes, you can use Griaule’s Fingerprint SDK without violating any software license agreement. An earlier public announcement on Microsoft website stated that users of any existing third-party SDKs or toolkits were in violation of the software license agreement with Microsoft and DigitalPersona. Griaule, with the help of EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), wrote to Microsoft to point out that people who merely buy the fingerprint reader are not parties to the Microsoft/Digital Persona license and can not violate it. Microsoft then changed the article on its website to the statement below. Therefore, the legal cloud has been lifted and customers may use Griaule’s Fingerprint SDK.

April, 2006—Griaule received a cease and desist letter from Microsoft suggesting that it might have improperly reverse engineered Microsoft fingerprint software and possibly be in violation.

January, 2008—Microsoft published knowledge base article stated that the users of third party SDKs like Griaule’s are in violation of Digital Persona/ Microsoft license agreement.

March 2008—Maxbio Biometrics Solution, an authorized Digital Persona reseller in Brazil emailed a Griaule customer warning about potential violation of the agreement.

March 2008—Griaule let EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) know about the whole situation and asked for help.

April 2008—EFF wrote a letter to Microsoft, Digital Persona and Maxbio explaining that Griaule didn’t violate the Microsoft Fingerprint software EULA nor do Griaule’s customers violate EULA when they use Griaule software.

July 2008—Microsoft updated knowledge base “Information about support for Microsoft Fingerprint Reader” with following statement: Microsoft Fingerprint Reader does not provide a software development kit (SDK), has not published any APIs for developers to write programs for the Fingerprint Reader, and does not support any third-party SDKs.

SUMMARY

This article describes how to identify and locate a product key. A product key is a unique combination of numbers and letters that is used during Griaule software registration to "unlock" the product. If you do not activate it using the product key, the product will always show a splash screen until you register the copy with the product key.

NOTE: A product key is not a license file or product ID (PID) number. A license file is created after a product is successfully installed and registered using the product key.

MORE INFORMATION

How to identify the product key

Griaule product keys contain 20 characters that are typically divided into groups of 4.

How to locate the product key

The product key can be found on Griaule's website. It's an information that is given after your payment has been approved.

You must be logged in on the website before you can view your product keys. Click on 'My Account', upper right on the page, and a list of yours product keys will be shown.

Product keys are specific to their software products. For example, you cannot use a ICAO Face SDK product key to unlock a Fingerprint SDK product.

APPLIES TO

• Fingerprint SDK 2009
• ICAO Face SDK 2008

Some of Griaule’s software requires the use of a product key in order to activate the licensed copy.

A product key is a unique combination of numbers and letters that is used during Griaule software registration to "unlock" the product. If you do not activate it using the product key, the product will always show a splash screen until you register the copy with the product key.

NOTE: A product key is not a license file or product ID (PID) number. A license file is created after a product is successfully installed and registered using the product key.

When the customer purchases a license package, he receives a "product key", and the number of licenses he bought is credited in his account. With this product key, the user can have access to all the licenses in his account.

The combination of the product key with the licensing methods has brought a robust way of licensing.

Licensing Methods

The registration process is only finished after Griaule’s server is contacted and from it a license file is downloaded. There are few ways to do that.

1. Using the Griaule’s icon tray (typically for End-User)

This is a straightforward way of register the software. Once you have the Griaule’s software running on the computer, a icon will show up on the icon tray. Right-clicking Griaule’s icon will open a pop-up menu, choose the option “Online Activation” and enter the Product Key. A message confirming the activation will be shown.

 

Click on the picture to see a large version of a diagram showing how this registering method works.

2. Using the SDK API to register the software (typically for Developers)

This is by far the easiest way. You just need to call the installLicense method at the beginning of the application.

Suppose your product key is AAAAA-AAAAA-BBBBB-KKKKK , then before initializing the sdk, the calling line would be like showed below.

griauleEngine.installLicense("AAAAA-AAAAA-BBBBB-KKKKK")

NOTE: You don’t need to verify if a license is already installed in the machine. The method does that for you.

NOTE: Before calling the installLicense() method, if you want to change the default directory the license is installed, you must call the method SetLicenseFolder() first.

Following is a picture with the overall idea.

Note that this code needs to be executed at least once (if it executes more than one time, no problem). The first time this code is executed, it connects to Griaule's server, checks if the user still has license credits available, if yes, it decreases the number of available license credits by one, and finally generates, downloads and installs a license file on the computer it is being executed.

 

Click on the picture to see a large version of a diagram showing how this registering method works.

3. Using Griaule's License Manager (typically for Integrators, network with no internet access)

The License Manager is an application useful if you want to install the software on a large amount of computer that have no internet access.

If you want to manage your licenses, or if the machines that you want to install the licenses don't have internet access , you can use griaule's license manager. You just need to collect the hardware keys of your machines with the license manager, then you go to your account in griaule's website, download the license , and install in your machines.

 

Click on the picture to see a large version of a diagram showing how this registering method works.

More info: How to use the License Manager

Download: You can download the License Manager here

APPLIES TO

 

• Fingerprint SDK 2009
• ICAO Face SDK 2008

Download: You can download the License Manager here

If you are searching for a more organized way of managing your licenses, Griaule offers you the "License manager".

With this application, you will able to download easily the licenses from griaule's website and install them in your machines through a friendly interface.

1. That is where the added projects will be listed;
2. The name of the product which the license belong;
3. The number of licenses which still can be used;
4. The license Type;
5. This button adds a new project. Each project is linked with a product key. And it contains a set of licenses of the product;
6. This button renames the project, but it does not change the product key. If you need that, you need to delete this project and create another one;
7. Deletes the project and removes all licenses of this project.But you can always create a new project with this product key, and download the licenses again;
8. This field shows your computer's hardware key;
9. Install the license on the appropriate place of this computer;
10. If license manager is unable of connecting to griaule's server, it will store the licenses and the user will have the option of installing it later;
11. This button removes the selected hardware key. It avoids the licenses to be downloaded when the user clicks "Download Licenses";
12. Here, all the downloaded licenses related to this project are listed;
13. Downloads the licenses of the selected project from griaule's web server. If there is any hardware key without license on the list, they will be downloaded too;

Once you purchased the Fingerprint SDK, you can use it both with the Windows version as well as with the Java version.

In order to get Fingerprint SDK for Java running under Linux there are some issues to pay attention to.

Fingerprint SDK and the Fingerprint Readers under Linux

It is not necessary the installation of any reader driver, but it is necessary that the application has rights of accessing the USB reader.

To run Fingerprint SDK Java-based applications on Linux x86 operating systems, the following file must be packaged:

* libgrfingerjava.so

The following file must also be packaged with all Fingerprint SDK Java-based applications requiring support for the Microsoft / DigitalPersona / Bio-I Cyte / Futronic FS80 / M2SYS M2-S fingerprint readers:

* CapPluginFingercap.so

Every time the Fingerprint SDK library is initialized, it searches for a license file in two locations in the file system. A valid license file must be placed in one of these locations or the library will not work.

The first location is the application's folder. This is the recommended location where to copy the license file when installing a Fingerprint SDK based application.

The second location is recommended only for developers and provides a system and user independent license location: it's the <COMMON APPLICATION DATA>\Griaule folder.

The path <COMMON APPLICATION DATA> is the file system folder containing application data for all users. In Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and 2003 operating systems, the environment variable APPDATA contains this path.

For the English version of the Windows operating system, the table below shows the most likely locations of the <COMMON APPLICATION DATA>\Griaule folder. Other Windows versions or non-English Windows may have slightly different paths. As an utmost option, create the folder if it doesn't exist.

Windows version	Folder
Windows Vista	C:\ProgramData\Griaule\
Windows XP Windows 2000 Windows 2003	C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Griaule\

Troubleshooting

If even after placing the license you have purchased, the unregistered version label or the splash screen still shows up, it means the SDK library is finding the trial license in your system. Try to locate the file named GrfingerLicenseAgreementtext.txt using the search of the operating system. Then replace this file with the one you downloaded from Griaule's site.

In fact, the only difference between the both versions is the matching speed. While the Verification version does, at maximum, 100 matchings per second, the Identification version does up to 35.000 matchings per second. They are useful in different scenarios. An example of these scenarios are given below.

Scenario of use for the Fingerprint Verification SDK

• Appropriate for 1:1 matching;
• It requires an ID + the template for the matching;
• Fast processing, involves only one matching;
• The user should in general give an id (e-mail, login name, NINO, etc).

Example:

1. Imagine a login screen, asking the user to be identified;
2. At this screen the id should be given and then the fingerprint captured through the fingerprint reader (template format);
3. The program then searches (in the database, e.g.) the record registered under the given id;
4. The program retrieves the content of the template field of the retrieved record;
5. Now the program uses the Fingerprint Verification SDK to know if the captured template at login screen is the same as the retrieved from the record;
6. If the matching returns true, the user can access the system;
7. If the matching returns false, the access should be denied;
8. The process of identifying the user finishes.

Scenario of use for the Fingerprint Identification SDK

• Appropriate for 1:N matching;
• It requires only the fingerprint template for the matching;
• Processing time dependent on the number (N) of templates, involves N matchings;
• The user does not need to give an id (e-mail, login name, NINO, etc).

Example:

1. Imagine a login screen, asking the user to be identified;
2. At this screen the fingerprint should be captured through the fingerprint reader (template format);
3. The program starts the loop through all user records in the system;
4. For each user in the system, the program retrieves the template content;
5. The program uses the Fingerprint Identification SDK to know if the captured fingerprint template is the same as the one of the current user record;
6. If the matching returns true, stops the loop and the user can have access to the system;
7. If the matching returns false, does not do anything and keep on doing the loop;
8. In case the loop reaches the end of the user list and no positive matching was identified, the access to the system should be denied;
9. The process of identifying the user finishes.

Trial License

• Downloaded together with the software;
• 30 days free trial;
• No technical limitations.

No technical limitation means that its functionality is exactly the same you will
find on the registered versions, except for the fact that a splash screen will pop
up every initialization time, remembering you it's a trial license. After this trial
period, you need to buy a Single-Computer or Integrator license to replace the trial
one. The software you develop with the trial license needs no modification in order
to work the the registered licenses. After replacing the trial license with the
registered one, the software will find it out.

Single Computer License

• Allowed to be used in only one computer;
• No technical limitations.

Each computer will have a unique license. If you have less than 30 computers, this
should be the license mode of your choice. These licenses will be issued to a person
you specify, allowing easy deployment. Using a Single-User license in more than
one computer at the same time is a violation of the license agreement.

Integrator License

• Allowed to be used in many computers*;
• No technical limitations.

*Up to the number allowed by the purchased license. This license facilitates even
more the software deployment with Griaule's libraries. The Integrator license allows
you, with a single purchase, to deploy the licenses to many individual installations
of your application up to the number of computers the purchased license indicates.
You should choose this mode of licensing if you have a large number of clients that
will be using your software or a large number of computers in your company. The
table below shows the products that have Integrator licenses available for purchasing.

Software	License	Maximum number of computers using the software libraries
Fingerprint SDK	Integrator 150	150
	Integrator 400	400
	Integrator 1500	1500
	Integrator 5000	5000
	Integrator 15000	15000
AFIS SDK	Integrator 50	50
	Integrator 150	150
	Integrator 400	400
WSQ SDK	Integrator 50	50
	Integrator 150	150
	Integrator 400	400
ICAO Face SDK	Integrator 10	10
	Integrator 50	50
	Integrator 200	200

Web application

If you have a web application developed using Griaule's SDK libraries, the right
license for you is the Integrator. You must estimate the maximum number of computer
will access your application and purchase a license according to this number.