SDK for fingerprint matching

Question

I am looking for SDKs which can do finger print matching. Rest of my code is mostly in C so I prefer if the SDK has C API's. Also it would be great if the SDK is free. Does anybody has experience with these SDKs and recommend any particular SDK? Also, while looking in these SDK what are the important features I should concentrate?

Answer 1

I've used two SDKs in the past, but only as a C# developer. Both the SDKs below say that they support C:

Griaule Fingerprint SDK (requires paid-for license)
Digital Persona OneTouch (free sdk)

A quick summary of features to consider:

• Are you verifying that a fingerprint matches that of a known user, or identifying a user from a single fingerprint?

  • The Griaule SDK implements both Verify and Identify patterns.
  • DigitalPersona's free SDK only supports Verify - to Identify, you have to loop through all the fingerprints in your database and see which one matches best. They state that this is 'inefficient', but if you have very few users (< 200), it seems quick enough.

• Adjustment of discrimination sensitivity (false positives/false negatives)

  • Balance up how closely a print must be identified. A high sensitity may cause a legitimate user's prints to be rejected, but a low sensitivity may match one users' prints to the wrong user. Assess the impact of each case and code accordingly.

• The deployment overheads differed - the DP components came with a merge module, but I only recall seeing standalone installs for Griaule.

• What fingerprint capture devices are you intending to support? Check very carefully that the SDK will support yours!

• Check the licensing terms very carefully the Griaule costs can be substantial based on the number of clients you expect to roll out to.

  • The Griaule SDK required a license file be deployed, both on client and server.
  • DP (free edition) did not.

• The .NET DP SDK came with a visually pretty, and easy to use, fingerprint registration dialog, but the version I downloaded (v1.4.0) had a bug with the fingerprint capture component taking up to 10 seconds to initialise. I don't know if this has been resolved yet. However, it was straightforward to code a bespoke UI.

Overall, I favoured the DP SDK, but it was a close-run thing. Basically, being license-free and better documented suited me more.