November 18th, 2010 at 12:01am Under Forum
How to choose wireless barcode scanner? What is important to consider when I’m buying?
How to choose wireless barcode scanner? What is important to consider when I’m buying some?
By Barcode Scanner 1 comment
November 13th, 2010 at 07:29am Under Forum
How to choose a barcode data collection terminal?
There are many kinds of barcode data collection terminal, which is best for small company in inventory?
By Barcode Scanner 5 comments
August 6th, 2010 at 12:43am Under Articles
How To Choose A Barcode Printer
Barcode Printers nowadays comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes with varying price range. It can also either be hand-held or desk bound. Technically, general purpose laserjet and inkjet printers cannot print barcodes by default. Usually, they require a add-on component or module. An example is Capella Technologies which provides barcode printing functionality to standard HP laserjet printers through an add-on flash card. Such barcode printers are usually limited in the number of symbologies that can be used.
Thermal Barcode printers, on the other hand supports multiple symbologies right out of the box. The more common barcode printer manufacturers include zebra and symbol.
There are two ways barcode printers print barcode, the first method is Thermal Transfer and the second method is Direct Thermal. Direct Thermal prints the barcode directly on the label while Thermal Transfer make use of a ribbon and a printhead. The ribbon is heated and the image is etched on by the printhead on a pre-defined area.
Thermal transfer allows you to print barcodes on a wider variety of materials than direct thermal. As such, the type of material you are going to print barcodes on is a crucial factor in determining which barcode printer to purchase.
Larger barcode printers usually have the ability to switch between direct thermal and thermal transfer. One disadvantage of thermal transfer is that the ribbon needs to be changed quite frequently. If you are using the barcode printer in a manufacturing environment, there could be a lot of downtime. A direct thermal printer is faster and is useful particularly where speed is required and you are not printing a lot of barcodes all the time. An example would be in a hospital where each patient warded is given a barcode to identify them.
If you need to print thousand of barcode labels at a time. Look at purchasing one of the thermal printers from symbol or zebra. I found them to be pretty good in terms of speed and functionality. I would advise to get a barcode printer that has a larger print width and a larger print label capacity.
Barcode Printing technology has evolved tremendously over the last few years. Lately, barcode manufacturers have implemented several security features to ensure there is no counterfeit coding. The latest models of barcode printers are capable of printing labels with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Devices) tags in them. Such security features are mandatory in some highly sensitive industries and help to provide a guarantee of authentication.
KB Lim is the owner of all-barcode-scanners.info Visit his site for more barcoding equipment reviews and barcode scanners recommendations
By Barcode Scanner Add comment
July 29th, 2010 at 07:45pm Under Forum
Choose a food product item BEFORE clicking: UPC/Barcode, Nutrition Label, Price Sticker, Wrapper?
Poll
If you picked
UPC/barcode: You are someone who is very hardworking and is currently employed.
Nutrition Label:You are someone who pays attention to details.
Price Sticker: You are someone who is very family-oriented and currently live with, or live near, at least 1 family member.
Wrapper: You are someone who is creative with artistic abilities.
Best answer:
I picked nutrition label and you were right!
By Barcode Scanner 10 comments
June 25th, 2010 at 12:42pm Under Articles
How To Choose A Barcode Scanner?
Barcode scanners are light emitting devices that are used to read barcodes. Usually attached to a computer or laptop via PS2 or RS-232, the data collected is stored on a computer for processing or storage. It is now used in many different industries such as retail or production.
They have been on the market for many years now with new versions of barcode scanners available every year. The prices can vary from as low as .00 to as high as several thousand dollars. So how do you pick a good barcode scanner?
To answer that question, it is important you know there are 2 major classes of barcode scanners, image-based and laser-based. Image-based barcode scanners use a camera usually embedded in a barcode scanner. The camera will capture the images and then processed by complex image techniques to decode the barcodes. Laser-based barcode scanners uses mirrors and lenses to read the barcodes.
Laser barcode scanners are usually more expensive than image-based scanners. They have their own pros and cons. An image-based barcode scanner do not have internal movable parts therefore are more resistant to drops or knocks than laser barcode scanners. Also, image-based barcode scanners have a shorter scanning distance (4 to 10 inches) compared to laser barcode scanners. On the other hand, laser scanners are more prone to wear and tear due to their lenses. They not only have a longer scanning distance (up to 24 inches) but also are able to scan from a wider angle from the barcode.
Be aware that the scanning distance for both image-based and laser barcode scanners have already improved dramatically over the years and I wouldn’t be surprised if a barcode manufacturer claims an image-based scanner has a scanning distance of 24 inches.
Here are some questions you need to ask yourself before getting a barcode scanner. The size of scanner required? Type of environment the barcode scanner will be using (outdoors, shop, warehouse)? The scanning distance required? Are they to be used hands free or hand-held? Your budget?
So my suggestion is if you need a barcode scanner for long range scanning, get a laser barcode scanner. For short range scanning, use an image-based barcode scanner such as a CCD barcode scanner. The environment as I asked earlier also plays an important part. If the barcode scanner is being used outdoors or in rugged environments where it is expected to take a drop or knock or two, then it is best to get an image-based barcode scanner. If it were for example being used in a retail shop, then a laser barcode scanner would be the best choice.
There are such a wide variety of barcode scanners available that I just can’t explain completely in this article. If you are in doubt, consult the barcode manufacturers such as symbol or metrologic who have sales consultants who are able to do an analysis of the type of barcode scanners needed by your business.
Dan Lim is the owner of all-barcode-scanners.info. Visit his site for more barcode scanners reviews and recommendations
Related Barcode Scanner Articles
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May 26th, 2007 at 04:26am Under Forum
Which three functions are commonly included in the all-in-one devices? (Choose three.)?
disk copy
fax
file storage
printer
scanner
wireless access point
Best answer:
printer, scanner, fax (but a copier is more common than the fax)
By Barcode Scanner 2 comments
January 27th, 2005 at 02:38am Under Forum
How to choose wireless barcode scanner? What is important to consider when I’m buying?
How to choose wireless barcode scanner? What is important to consider when I’m buying some?
Best answer:
Function & Price
The reader types can be distinguished as follows:
Pen type readers
Pen type readers consist of a light source and a photodiode that are placed next to each other in the tip of a pen or wand.To read a bar code, the tip of the pen moves across the bars in a steady motion. The photodiode measures the intensity of the light reflected back from the light source and generates a waveform that is used to measure the widths of the bars and spaces in the bar code. Dark bars in the bar code absorb light and white spaces reflect light so that the voltage waveform generated by the photo diode is a representation of the bar and space pattern in the bar code. This waveform is decoded by the scanner in a manner similar to the way Morse code dots and dashes are decoded.
Laser scanners
Laser scanners work the same way as pen type readers except that they use a laser beam as the light source and typically employ either a reciprocating mirror or a rotating prism to scan the laser beam back and forth across the bar code.As with the pen type reader, a photodiode is used to measure the intensity of the light reflected back from the bar code. In both pen readers and laser scanners, the light emitted by the reader is tuned to a specific frequency and the photodiode is designed to detect only this modulated light of the same frequency.
CCD Readers
CCD readers (also referred to as LED scanner) use an array of hundreds of tiny light sensors lined up in a row in the head of the reader. Each sensor measures the intensity of the light immediately in front of it. Each individual light sensor in the CCD reader is extremely small and because there are hundreds of sensors lined up in a row, a voltage pattern identical to the pattern in a bar code is generated in the reader by sequentially measuring the voltages across each sensor in the row. The important difference between a CCD reader and a pen or laser scanner is that the CCD reader is measuring emitted ambient light from the bar code whereas pen or laser scanners are measuring reflected light of a specific frequency originating from the scanner itself.
Camera-Based Readers
2D imaging scanners are the fourth and newest type of bar code reader currently available. They use a small video camera to capture an image of a bar code. The reader then uses sophisticated digital image processing techniques to decode the bar code. Video cameras use the same CCD technology as in a CCD bar code reader except that instead of having a single row of sensors, a video camera has hundreds of rows of sensors arranged in a two dimensional array so that they can generate an image.
There are a number of open source libraries for barcode reading from images. These include the ZXing project, which reads one- and two-dimensional barcodes using Android and JavaME, the JJIL project, which includes code for reading EAN-13 barcodes from cellphone cameras using J2ME, and Zebra (Changed name to ZBAR?), which reads various one-dimensional barcodes in C. Even web site integration, either by image uploads (e.g. Folke Ashberg: EAN-13 Image-Scanning and code creation tools) or by use of plugins (e.g. the Barcodepedia uses a flash application and some web cam for querying a database), have been realized options for resolving the given tasks.
Omni-Directional Barcode Scanners
Omni-directional scanning uses “series of straight or curved scanning lines of varying directions in the form of a starburst, a lissajous pattern, or other multiangle arrangement are projected at the symbol and one or more of them will be able to cross all of the symbol’s bars and spaces, no matter what the orientation.”
Omni-directional scanners almost all use a laser. Unlike the simpler single-line laser scanners, they produce a pattern of beams in varying orientations allowing them to read barcodes presented to it at different angles. Most of them use a single rotating polygonal mirror and an arrangement of several fixed mirrors to generate their complex scan patterns.
Omni-directional scanners are most familiar through the horizontal scanners in supermarkets, where packages are slid across a glass or sapphire window. There are a range of different omni-directional units available which can be used for differing scanning applications, ranging from retail type applications with the barcodes read only a few centimetres away from the scanner to industrial conveyor scanning where the unit can be a couple of metres away or more from the code.
Omni-directional scanners are also better at reading poorly printed, wrinkled, or even torn barcodes.
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