A Guide to Barcoding/RFID Devices

Entrepreneurs who start a small retail business run into one of those things that you never think of until you have to: how to deal with barcodes. Barcodes have a kind of unseen life of their own, unnoticed by the majority of society. Then you open a store and have to stock retail, and all of a sudden you have to know what’s what. Here’s our user-friendly guide.

Barcode devices

These are those handheld devices which look remarkably like a Star Trek phaser (so much so, we think they do it on purpose!). It’s really quite simple in principle - it shines a harmless red laser beam at the barcode, with a photodiode to recognize the pattern of stripes that reflect back. It will usually sound a tone when the read is confirmed. The device is designed so that you don’t even need exact aim - point and shoot.

Now that it has the code, it has to send that to something else. The standard these days is to use Bluetooth to send the data to another device, be that the PDA with the stock information, the inventory computer network, or wherever. Scan the object and up pops the inventor data on the display.

One such setup is by the Motorola-owned Symbol Technologies system, the Symbol PPT reader and Symbol MC50 handheld digital assistant. You have your scanner in one hand and your digital assistant in the other; they communicate by Bluetooth.

Another such setup is by Socket Mobile, Inc. Here you can pick the Cordless Hand Scanner, which sends data to your choice of PDAs such as Pocket PCs, Palm PDAs, Symbian smartphones, or Windows Mobile system. Or you can choose the Socket SD/CF Scanner, which plugs directly into a PDA system with a SDIO slot, and is also compatible with a wide range of systems.

Finally, there’s the Flic scanners by Microvision. Their Cordless Bluetooth scanner also works on the principle of being a separate scanner device which then send the data to a handheld PDA device. Works with systems such as Pocket PC, Windows Mobile 5, Blackberry and Symbian, and even has its own open source software development kit for custom programming!

RFID devices

Barcodes are the old way of making objects quickly recognizable to machines; RFID is the new way. Radio-Frequency ID is a little tag with an integrated circuit embedded in it. This tiny tag acts like a little beacon, allowing a reader to home in on it and scan its data. They are not only for identifying products, but are typically deployed in card swipe/scan systems. The last time you stayed at a hotel, your room “key” was probably one such system.

One scanner that’s making some buzz is the Bluetooth IDBlue RFID pen. It’s a simple pen-shaped handheld device that scans the RFID tag and sends the data along to any handheld device. Made by Cathexis Innovations Inc.

Another option is the line of CF RFID readers from Mifare. these devices plug directly into a Pocket PC and scan the tag and interpret the data right there on the Pocket PC screen.

Or perhaps you need the reader to be stationary. Promag makes the Proxdata CF reader, a wall-mounted device where can swipe a tag just like the keycard systems you might already be familiar with.

Choose Barcode or RFID?

That’s up to you! There’s pros and cons to each standard. Certainly, the barcode system is old and the RFID is new and in many cases FRID is replacing barcodes, but there are many cases where barcodes are still the practical choice. RFIDs are more expensive, but are capable of so much more functionality and uses. For instance, they can be integrated with anti-theft systems, security access control, and other tracking uses. Barcodes are much cheaper - especially for printing the tags - but much more limited. Note that most, if not all, packaged retail products have been issued with barcodes on the label for generations now, and nobody’s seen anything wrong with that system so far.

Filed Under: Barcoding