Comment 41 for bug 1641290

I'm the author of the driver for elan. The algorithm which libfprint uses to match fingerprints doesn't like small images like the ones these drivers produce. There's just not enough minutiae (recognizable print-specific points) on them for a reliable match. This means that unless another matching algo is found/implemented, these readers will not work as good with libfprint as they do with vendor drivers.

To get bigger images the driver expects you to swipe the finger over the reader. This works quite well for me with a rectangular 144x64 sensor. Worse than with a real swipe sensor but good enough for day-to-day use. It needs a steady and relatively slow swipe. There are also square 96x96 sensors and I don't know whether they are in fact usable or not because I don't have one. I imagine they'd be less reliable because the resulting image is even smaller. If they can't be made usable with libfprint, I might end up dropping them because it's better than saying they work when they don't.

The latest code is at https://github.com/iafilatov/libfprint. It recongizes 0903, 0907, 0c03, 0c16, 0c1A and 0c26. If you think you have a similar device which isn't listed, please consider adding it to id_table and letting me know if it works. Comments and feedback are also welcome. Just keep in mind that due to reasons above, performance on par with vendor drivers should not be expected.