[FX.php List] Wireless BarCode Scanners

[Troy Meyers]

Jonathan,

I have no good answers, but we are looking at it. If you are excluding iPhone as a platform, then this isn't relevant to you. If iPhone is it, then prior to iPhone OS 3.0 we were approaching the problem using an FSK-input method to the iPhone (without jailbreaking) from a pen scanner with some adapter hardware, through the dock connector. It's physically cumbersome. 

Now, under 3.1 there are a couple of nicer possibilities, one is using the RedLaser SDK which actually uses the iPhone camera to look at the barcodes. The SDK allows you to collect scans for your own app. It won't work for us right now, though, because that SDK doesn't support Code39 which is what we must use. I don't recall the ones supported, but if you dig around surrounding this page:
http://www.redlaser.com/SDK.aspx
you might find it. I know UPC is one, and perhaps another (EAN?)
Occipital will potentially add Code39 or others in the future (based on email conversions with them) but their plate is pretty full right now. Perhaps if you asked too, it'd add fuel to the fire.

The other possibility is that supposedly Bluetooth is more accessible under 3.1. I don't know if it's accessible enough. I'm awaiting delivery of a Bluetooth pen scanner (Baracode Pencil2) which, if it can be made to cooperate with the iPhone would be idea for our application. For us, a pen (especially one without a cord) is best due to ambient light and physical accessibility of the barcode issues. If I can interface the Bluetooth then we'll build data collection from the pen into the app, which really is a CWP application but has to be inside a special "scanner Safari" that allows field to be filled with scan data when appropriate, instead of from the "keyboard".

This is all thought-exercise at this point. I'll know more when the pen arrives and I start figuring out that portion of the iPhone development stuff. I have no idea if any will really work out.

-Troy


> Anyone done anything with wireless hand-held bar code scanners to 
> report deliveries, ala FedEx, UPS and the like?
> 
> I know that I could make an iphone friendly CWP application without 
> the bar code part, but that's not the target.
> 
> J