The Many Kinds of Barcode Scanners

Oh, don't look at us like that! This is a fun topic! Apparently for the simple application of optically scanning data, we have dozens of special needs for each industry, and a Swiss Army knife's worth of gadgets to meet them. Speaking of Swiss Army knives, have you ever noticed that they always have a corkscrew? Who wants their soldiers popping open bottles of Bordeaux out in the trenches, anyway? Must be why the Swiss never successfully invaded another country. Anyway...

Barcode readers can come in the shape of:

* PDA housing - just a sensor on the end of a PDA.

* Fixed position housing - it stays put, you bring the thing to it.

* Pens - at least it's shaped like a pen. It doesn't write anything.

* Handheld scanner - the most common kind. Shaped like a gun, or perhaps a Star Trek phaser.

The "reader" part of a barcode scanner may take any one of the following forms:

* Omni-Directional - Many red lines bouncing off the barcode at once, ensuring that at least one line will be able to read the barcode no matter what direction it's rotated. That's why supermarkets have the star-shaped scanner light, so the clerk can just zip everything through instead of having to turn each can of peas the right way.

* Camera-based - The newest kind, these use 2D imaging in a form of OCR reading.

* CCD readers - for when you need real accuracy and dense information, these are hundreds of tiny LEDs which practically taste the code instead of just winking at it.

* Laser scanners - the red line bounces off the black and white stripes. You've seen it a million times.

* Pen-type readers. You shine a point of laser light across a stripe of code.

And finally, there's different methods and uses for each of these:

* The pen (sometimes called the wand) is used to carry around and zip off a code here and there. Only used when you don't care about speed.

* Semi-automatic handhelds - Those phaser-shaped ones that beam a line of red light. Point and shoot, cowboy. Used in places where you might have to scan hundreds of codes in an hour - like the grocery store!

* Fixed-mounted readers - Something which you might find at an assembly line or warehouse, mounted on a wall and scanning the code on boxes or shipping containers as they pass by. Also used by things like mail-sorting machines. You know those funny little lines on the envelope when you get your bill in the mail? Those things.

* Reader gates - similar to the last one, but we wanted one more entry here just so our writer gets a hearty paycheck. Reader gates are actually like those supermarket checkstand scanners, and also they use them at places like libraries for checking out materials.

Pick and choose the one that's right for your business. Remember to test it in your business environment to make sure its the kind that will keep your business running efficiently. And be careful to use what you've learned here for good, not evil.

I am a programmer and web-designer.  While working on a POS system for a client, I started to research Barcode scanners to integrate with in the system.  After a lot of reading online reviews and discussing in several forums, I decided on the Microvision ROV – Bluetooth Storage Barcode Scanner.  The results were excellent.  Personally, I usually prefer to dazzle my customers with my programming skills, but great hardware doesn’t hurt either.

Installation

From opening the package to scanning my first item took about 15 minutes.  Very easy and clear instructions.  From there, integrating with my own program took about 30 minutes.

Functionality

I needed the scanner to be able to be used for sales as well as inventory and checking in stock.  So, it had to be able to enter barcodes while connected and to store barcodes if used when not connected.  This worked great.  The scanner can be connected via serial, USB, or Bluetooth.  When used near the terminal, it fed the barcodes directly into my software.  When I ventured too far and it disconnected, it stored the codes and transferred as soon as the connection was re-established.  It holds 4000 barcodes in memory. 

The scanner runs on 3 AAA batteries, which for me is a plus over rechargeable units.  You don’t want to have to stop inventory because your scanner needs to charge.  The memory is non-volatile, so when the batteries die, you just pop in 3 more and continue working.

Conclusion

I highly recommend this scanner.  After installing and integrating in my system, demonstrating to the customer, and getting feedback on his first week’s use, I am very satisfied with this product.

You Can Read More @…
http://www.pressdigital.com.au/barcoding-access-control-stripe-rfid/microvision-bluetooth-storage-barcode-scanner-p-5549.html

Chris Johnson

If the title of this article is something that's on your mind, you're not alone. As a mobile device user, you repeatedly have the subject of encryption coming up in discussions of security on everything from laptops to smartphones. But what is it, how does it work, and why does it make our brains fuzzy?

Cryptography is a matter of codes. Here is the world's simplest code: Rotation-13, also known as the Caesar cipher, and abbreviated to "Rot13". It takes the standard 26-letter English alphabet, breaks it in half into two 13-letter segments, and substitutes letters from one half for letters in the same position in the other half. A table would look like this:

ABCDEFGHIJKLM
NOPQRSTUVWXYZ

A becomes M, M becomes A, B becomes O, O becomes B, and so on. It's called a rotation because the same method can be applied to encode and decode the message. ROT13 is only good for hiding a plot spoiler or punchline to a joke on the Internet. Other rotations can be used, however; such is the case with letter-substitution puzzles, called "cryptigrams", printed in the daily newspaper. This used to be effective security in the Julian Caesar era, when you had to work it out yourself writing on a papyrus scroll.

Computers can rip any letter substitution code in an eyeblink. In fact, a cryptographer can break any letter substitution using paper and pen. For one reason, they can use a magic spell called "ETAOIN SHRDLU". You think we're pulling your leg, don't you? Go ahead, search Google for that exact phrase. We'll wait right here.

The phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU gives us the top twelve most frequently used letters in English. Using this, we can break a page of letter-substituted text using letter frequency analysis. The most frequent letter is assuredly e or t, the second most-frequent is usually e, t, or a, and so on. A few tries will reveal the shift, and the rest falls neatly into place.

So now what do we do? We can include not only the alphabet, but the digits 0-9 plus the standard punctuation characters and come up with "ROT47". Programmers know of the GNU software function, "memfrob()", which performs this action automatically. It's a "stronger" code, but we can still break it with letter frequency analysis with a bit more effort, even if we don't know what position the characters are using.

Let's say you came up with a new code. How about substituting 3 digits for each letter? You could call "A" 311, but the trick is that any combination of 311 - 113, 131 - also means "A". B could be 489, with the same method applied, so we'd know that 131948 and 113984 are "AB". We keep this up for each letter and character, then we break the string of numbers up into irregular groups - 13194 8275 5100923 453 22. We know that we only have to have the computer read the digits in in bursts of three, look the digits up in a table, and produce the decoded text. But even this can be broken without too much effort. It eventually produces a pattern, and where there's a pattern, there's a key.

But you're seeing a pattern here, right? We try to encode a message with methods that have a larger and larger pool of possibilities, and having the right decoding method is the "key", with which we can unlock the message. Small, simple algorithms are so easy to break, that it's possible to discover the "key" quickly. We want the opposite. We want algorithms that are soooo complex, that they can produce millions and millions of possibilities, with only the one true key producing the right result. When we do this, we wander away from linguistics and get into math. The method for encrypting is known as a "cipher". By using larger and more complex cyphers, we can increase the possibilities many thousands of times. Further on, we can find ciphers which are their own key - merely reversing the algorithm gives the original message - or ciphers which require a different algorithm to decrypt them. This is the difference between private-key and public-key encryption.

So, large encryption schemes work by making it impractical to crack a code by brute force; you want it so you'd literally have to run a computer for a hundred years to find the key. One of the most common forms of encryption known today, SHA-1, SHA-2, etc., have so far stayed unbreakable, but a recent mathematic proof has shown that it could have a flaw, so we're looking for SHA-3 which could be in place by 2012. The name of the game right now is to look for a new algorithm at the first sign that it could be broken, before criminals actually start breaking them.

Now, beyond this, if you're interested in learning more, there's information all over the Internet. But this at least helps break the fundamentals down to where we mortals can understand it. Know this: all encryption algorithms will eventually be broken. This is because computers get more powerful - and hence faster - all the time. And Moore's law - which, to be brief, says that integrated circuits double their power every two years - guarantees that this will continue indefinitely. Richard P. Feynman's 1960 physics lecture "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" proves that we will indeed be able to pack more and more processing logic into smaller and smaller space for some time to come - and after that, there's quantum computing on the horizon.

The sole saving grace of cryptography is that it is a small bit easier to invent an algorithm than it is to break it. That's the only thing saving civilization right now, because we will go on making more sophisticated algorithms and finding breaks in them only a few years later.

Once upon a time, the world used barcodes to track items. Starting in the 1950s, barcodes began to be applied to labels on eventually every retail consumer product manufactured. Every item had its UPC. Everybody seemed fairly happy with it.

But technology has advanced to the point of radio frequency ID tags. And, perhaps because of the time in history they came along, there's been a lot of controversy around them. Like any technology, it takes some time to get used to the idea.

What controversies? Well, there's some religions which associate RFID technology with the "Number of the Beast" if it's used on humans. There's the hacker community, who tries to point out that the technology is not fail-safe - what technology ever truly is? - and in some cases gets gagged for it. There's the activist sector who fear that too many RFID tags in everything will lead to a "Big Brother" surveillance society. And so on.

We can't reassure those who fear RFIDs for one reason or another here. All we can say is that retailers are looking for a way to track this jacket through their inventory system in the most efficient way. We want smarter gadgets that make our lives easier. And RFID technology has some really interesting potential.

RFID tags can be either passive or active. The passive tags function more like a hyper-barcode; they do nothing without a scanner nearby, and all the scanner can do is read them. But they can hold dozens of times more data than a barcode, in near-microscopic space.

The active kind open up new possibilities. These are actually a tiny little computer microchip in and of themselves, with a battery and the ability to change their data. An active RFID tag together with a temperature sensor, for instance, can tell a scanner whether the tagged has ever been stored at temperatures above or below a safety threshold. An active chip in an airplane could tell you how much nuclear radiation it had been exposed to.

Beyond the obvious uses in retail stock control, the places where RFIDs are showing up could almost fill a book:

·Passports - At least 14 industrialized nations have added RFID capability to their standard issue passports. This is a step towards security.

·Payment system - RFID cards are replacing tollbooths on motorways and bridges. You can simply drive by the reader, and it will automatically deduct the fractional fee from your account. Public transportation passes for the subway and bus systems are also using RFID payment cards.

·Sports - Racing sports of all varieties are using RFID chips to measure lap time and finish position.

·Livestock - We don't need to brand cattle anymore; now we can just plant a chip.

·Libraries - Checking library books in and out is now an automated process in most places. This goes for all forms of media, including CDs, DVDs, tapes, and software.

Other uses seem to be limited only by the imagination. One clothing retailer offered "social shopping", where RFID tags in clothing along with the customer's shopper ID combine with scanners in the fitting rooms. The result: whatever clothing the customer is trying on at the time gets blogged, with pictures, to the customer's online social network. This is popular with young teens. Another case is where a museum used the technology to interactively track visitors through the different exhibits, both to enhance their tour by playing recorded speeches and to compose a printed memoir of their experience later.

RFID technology is definitely here to stay, and it's opening up possibilities we never dreamed of earlier. Some of it may be met with less enthusiasm than other applications. And then again, we still see barcodes on every can of peas. Because sometimes, a product is just a can of peas!

Since the beginning of the industrial age and the capitalistic consumption society which it spawned, people have been looking for a method of automated data collection. Even before computers, retailers kept elaborate stock number systems. Sometimes these would show up as adhesive tags on the products, but you still had to have a human read them and write them into the inventory card system. The first automated checkout system was actually to be implemented on punched cards, in 1932.

The first barcodes saw commercial usage in 1966, but only slowly gained widespread acceptance. The bar code system most readers will be familiar with is the UPC, the Universal Product Code. You find these black-and-white bars on product packages, everything from TV sets to bags of peanuts.

The UPC format is [S]NNNNN[M]NNNNN[E], where S and E are just the start and end stripes and M is the middle separating stripe. The first digit of the left number is the prefix and the last digit of the right number is a checksum digit, used only to verify that the other digits were read correctly. An interesting fact is that the prefix digit is sometimes significant:

· A 2 means that the product is sold by weight, such as with butchered meat.

· A 3 is reserved for drugs, both over-the-counter and prescription.

· A 4 is reserved for store use; it often prefixes frequent shopper discount cards.

· A 5 means it's a coupon.

The code is of course translated into those horizontal black bars, which actually correspond to a binary representation of the digits. The reader scans this by bouncing a red laser beam off of the black and white pattern, then a sensor in the scanner records the light pattern reflected back. The standard sensor is a photodiode, however, newer models have made use of a miniature video camera which literally takes a picture of the barcode, then analyzes the pixels in the image.

Variations on this theme include the pen-type laser scanner where you swipe the tip across the code, CCD readers which have an array of sensors and process the image more like a digital camera would, and the aforementioned imaging scanners. There's also the stationary scanner, which is the kind the supermarket uses, and handheld scanners.

Handheld scanners either come as an extension to a PDA or a handheld "laser gun" model that relays the data to the PDA or handheld device. Remember that a stand-alone scanner isn't made to interpret the code into meaningful data; that job is up to the inventory control software. Older scanners sent the data with a cable, plugging into a PDA with a PS/2 connector just like a computer mouse and keyboard. Newer scanners transmit the data wirelessly, either by Bluetooth or infrared signal or whatever other scheme.

Barcodes come in many more varieties than UPC. There are dozens of variations for all kinds of uses. The United States post office uses POSTNET, the UK's Royal Mail uses RM4SCC, and Canada's mail service uses CPC Binary. Pharmacies have their own code, as does the magazine publishing industry and the color print film industry.

The familiar barcade we've been thinking about so far is considered "1D", that is, it's a simple line of stripes. But there are "2D" barcodes and block (called "matrix") barcodes as well. The block barcodes look just like an image using black and white pixels. One example of 2D barcodes is the embedded sound data in 35mm film strips, used by Dolby Digital and Sony Dynamic. Microsoft has created the High Capacity Color Barcode, which uses color, and on the flip side there's a matrix-code called "Aztec code" which is formerly patented by Honeywell but now released to the public domain.

We could go on and on, but generally you get the point that there's as many ways to optically encode data onto printed media as there are ways that you can think of, and that whatever we do, we must not invent any more code systems. We have enough for every possible need. And things will be complicated enough when we all start switching to RFID tags and chips. Find a great range of Barcode Scanners from our friends over at Pressdigtial

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.