[ic] Barcode Scanner & Software interact with IC?

Frank Reitzenstein frank at aussievitamin.com
Mon Aug 15 02:26:37 UTC 2011


Hello Paul,

We wrote our own application when we first started, but don't use
anymore because we refuse to serve stingy Australian retailers now,
compete with them and do things differently.

The system worked as follows:

The retailer walks a laptop with scanner and camera on a trolly down an
aisle. They place an item on the scale, scan it and take a photo. The
image contains a time stamp. The weight and time is also recorded. My
software analysed a folder full of images and a sequential file with a
barcode, weight and possibly typed in description and comment.

My software opened each JPEG file (later), found the time stamp and
matched it to the correct record in the sequential file (you need to do
things in order). It then created barcode.jpg like this 1234567890.jpg.
We then changed that to sku.jpg later, but it was a great way of
matching an image to the data records.

I would now use perl tk to do this. Create a menu and submit some data
to create the sequential file, record weights and typed in info and
times. We found no way to use a camera with this. Hence the camera was
standalone. If the photo was taken before we click "process" on the menu
then the time in the JPEG is just before the time in the data file (and
yes they do need to be set daily, as time drifts). Things most likely
have progressed in 7 years and you may be able to plug a camera into
your pc and use in real time like the scales.

We don't use that anymore but we do have a decrementing stock counter
for the items we stock only.

Regards,

Frank Reitzenstein



On 8/5/2011 6:00 AM, Jon Jensen wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Aug 2011, Paul Jordan wrote:
>
>> I'm wondering if anybody is/has used a barcode scanner in an office
>> that plugged/collaborated with a Windows PC running (presumably) it's
>> barcode software, that could be programmed to connect to a remote
>> interchange server for things like updating inventory.
>
> I've used Symbol handheld barcode scanners with a couple of clients.
> Their recent scanners are USB devices that act like keyboards, so they
> just type the barcode number really fast, and thus don't require any
> special programming -- just a web browser with focus on the correct
> field when you scan the barcode. That's nice because it works on any
> OS, in any browser, and doesn't need any special development.
>
> I have had to change the scanner programming a little to stop it from
> sending special control characters at the beginning and/or end of the
> barcode number, but that's easy to do and explained in the manual.
>
> Jon
>




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