Symbol DS3578 Barcode Scanner

Motorola/Symbol’s rocking their blockbuster scan engine into all of their 2D scanners nowadays and so I’m working to get them all on the site. Their industrial cordless scanner, the DS3578, is a pretty burly addition to their lineup and goes great with Carharts & Red Wings.

They have two flavors available for this scanner, High Density and Standard Range, and I prefer that. For a while companies would offer four or five different tweaks on the same scan engine, and it’d just be a headache for customers trying to figure out which one they need. That being said, they do have a DPM scanner, DPM being Direct Parts Marking, or etching barcodes onto materials for scanning. But that’s a very specific market so we’ll avoid that style scanner.

The High Density scanner can read barcodes as dense as 3 mil, which is verging on pretty packed for most applications, but definitely exists on parts used during the manufacturing process. Scanning tiny barcodes does squash the depth of field, so you get about 6″ of scan range on standard 13 mil UPC barcodes, with some variance depending on the density of the barcode you want to read.

Standard Range scanning will probably be what most people need. 4 mil is the smallest barcode it can read, which is still pretty tiny for 95% of everyone out there. You get a lot more play on the depth of field, going out to about 15″ on 13 mil UPC barcodes.

And because Bluetooth is pretty silly with only 40 feet of range, especially in a warehouse, Motorymbol put a beefier radio in these scanners. You get up to 300 feet of radio range, line of sight, which is pretty awesome. I can’t imagine too many circumstances that require a scanner to be that far from the host, but it’s still awesome to have the capability. Or you can pair the scanner to a coworker’s mobile computer and randomly fire data at him/her. Workplace mischief is great when you have a 300 foot head start.

Burliness is a key feature of the DS3578, allowing it to operate in all sorts of inhumane conditions. The scanner is sealed to IP65 specifications, meaning that no dust can get in and harm the internal components, nor can low pressure jets of water. I’d feel bad for the person who has to work in those conditions, but I guess if you left it out in a storm it would be okay.

To further complement the durability of the DS3578, it was built to hold up to temperatures from -4° to 120° Fahrenheit, so keeping track of frozen stuff, like dairy princess butter sculptures, is no big deal. I’ve wanted to reference butter sculptures for a while, it feels great to finally get the opportunity.

The scanner is also built to take a beating, holding up to 6.5-foot drops to concrete and still running strong.

iPhones and Barcode Scanners

So I’ve already made my claims to the problems with trying to use a cell phone camera as a barcode scanner. Mostly in that it’s lame and not good for more than a couple scans here and there. But we’re still getting customers with iPhones who want to track their inventory with the phone. So after much consternation, and two searches on Google for “iPhone Barcode Scanner”, we’ve got a couple units that should do what you need.

First up is the Socket Cordless Hand Scanner (CHS) Series 7 barcode scanner. Talk about a mouthful. We’ve actually had the CHS up on our site for a few years, but recently they upgraded the apparatus to run in human interface device (HID) mode with a special barcode you scan to configure it to communicate with iPhones, iPads, and iPods Touch (iPod Touches?) There’s also a method for it to work with Blackberries, so the CHS is a solid, rechargeable alternative to the Cipherlab 1660 barcode scanner.

This scanner comes with in 3 body designs: Standard for day to day use, rugged for rougher environments, and a rugged antimicrobial housing for healthcare applications. Tracking patient info is getting to be more important everyday, and giving employees the option to use this scanner with a smartphone they already own seems like a great alternative to buying an entirely new device. You also get your choice of standard or high-powered 1D laser or 2D imager as your scanning method, so the CHS 7 definitely can be scaled to meet your exact needs.

Not to be outdone, the Motorola CS3070, when in Bluetooth HID mode, also connects & communicates with iPhones. This is the combo batch & bluetooth scanner that replaced the aging CS1504 and can hold far more barcodes than is necessary while in batch mode.

Though it has only a 1D laser scanner option, the CS3070’s scanner is pretty burly. On a UPC-A barcode, what you see on pretty much every consumer product ever, I was able to scan from about 2 feet away with no problems. Motorola knows laser scanning, and the CS3070 is no exception.

We’re still hacking away on the demo units we have, in an effort to make setup as painless as possible.

Honeywell Barcode Scanner Retirements

With the advent of the Honeywell Xenon, a big chunk of the former HHP and Motorola 2D barcode scanners are now redundant. Honeywell’s decided to let them run for a while before taking them to the farm upstate, and I’m sure customers appreciate that plan as opposed to pulling them from shelves immediately.

It really boils down to the 4206, FocusBT, Focus, 4600, and 4820 being replaced by the Xenon, but there are some specifics, such as which type of imager is replaced and so on. I’ll put a big table breaking down the specific scanner part numbers, but not the kits.

Focus/FocusBT: For a while (like right when I started), the Focus & its cordless brother was the go-to 2D barcode scanner for us. It was reasonably priced & pretty good at scanning messed up barcodes. Once they added EasyDL (formerly EasyID) for driver’s license parsing, the scanner became a staple at Targets across the universe. Getting a customer set up for a rewards program or even a credit application is wicked easy when you just have to scan the back of an ID instead of hand type it.

4600/4820: These came from the HHP side of the family, and they are some burly barcode scanners. They came in quite a few flavors, including standard range, special focus, and high density models, so they were great at certain scanning situations as opposed to okay at all of them. The 4600g lineup had disinfectant-ready options, in case you needed a scanner at your hospital & wanted to be sure it was completely cleanable after someone got sick on it. The 4600r was a bit more high-end, giving you the option of downloading configurations and a quick autoscan mode for presentation scanning.

Here’s the table breakdown. Most products got replaced by the standard range Xenon, but there are some differences in there. If you have a kitted model, just check out the part number on your barcode scanner, and it should be in this list.

What you had	What you should get
4600g
4600GSR031CE	1900gSR-2
4600GSR051CE	1900gSR-2
4600GSR151CE	1900gSR-2
4600GSF031CE	1900gSR-2
4600GSF051CE	1900gSR-2
4600GSF151CE	1900gSR-2
4600GHD051CE	1900gHD-2
4600GHD151CE	1900gHD-2
4600GHDH051C	1900hHD-0
4600r
4600RSR051CE	1900gSR-2
4600RSR151CE	1900gSR-2
4600RSF051CE	1900gSR-2
4600RSF151CE	1900gSR-2
Focus 1690
MS1690-106	1900gSR-2
MS1690-14	1900gSR-2
MS1690-38	1900gSR-2
MS1690-47	1900gSR-2
MS1690-40	1900gSR-2
MS1690-62	1900gSR-2
4206
4206GHD051C	1900gHD-2
4206GSF051C	1900gSR-2
4206GSR051C	1900gSR-2
4820
4820HDH0C1CBE	1902hHD-0
4820HDHM	1902hHD-0
4820SF0C1CBE	1902gSR-2
4820SR0C1CBE	1902gSR-2
FocusBT 1633
MS1633-5	1902gSR-2

Quite a big list for just the scanner units. The kits would’ve easily quadrupled this in size.

Motorola CS3070 Barcode Scanner

Part of the fun of being a product manager is getting to know manufacturer reps. These guys & gals live and breathe their product line, and they’re more than happy to extol the virtues of their new fantastic product. I figure there’s either some kool aid involved, or the smell of new plastics has some sort of mind altering effect, because they exhibit a level of exuberance I’m more accustomed to seeing at a Disney theme park.

The reps seem to enjoy picking my brain about products as well. A few have said that often times we have a view of what our customers need that might not line up with other resellers or developers. Twelve cell phone radios might not be what our customers need. But sometimes a product comes out that so specifically hits our main user base that we know it’s going to be a knockout even when it’s just a 3D render and a few buzzwords.

The Motorola CS3070 barcode scanner is one such item. For the longest time, Motorola/Symbol (or Motorymbol if you dig synergy) had been manufacturing & shipping out the CS1504, a batch barcode scanner that ran on a few watch batteries and looked like something you’d find at the bottom of a toy chest. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t designed to take the market by storm, but it was a good and inexpensive way for businesses and consumers to scan a ton of barcodes and output them into a spreadsheet. We sold our share of them, and customers really liked the fact that you could perform basic inventory management for under $400.

But the scanner was pretty lacking and showing its age. The scan engine was an older model that seemed underpowered compared to its cabled brethren, 3 disposable watch batteries really doesn’t scream environmentally friendly, it was very much something that needed some refreshing. And whenever our rep came to visit, we’d mention that if they put together a newer unit, with a rechargeable battery, we could probably move a few. And so they did, and in a big way.

The Motorola CS3070 takes entry level batch scanning and makes it easier than you could imagine. Because people often imagine scanning tons of barcodes and exporting it to something else. They’ve built it with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that charges over USB no sweat. It’s available in two flavors, straight up batch data sending and Bluetooth. The Bluetooth model acts as a regular cordless scanner, or it can send batch data over USB like its radio-less partner.

What sets it apart from the Opticon OPN 2002 is that the CS3070 has 512 MB of flash memory. Motorola claims that’s enough memory to store over 1 million barcodes and timestamps, however the OPN 2002 can store around 20,000 with its 1 MB of memory. I did some a little math, because math is fun, and with a straight comparison, 512 MB could theoretically store 10.2 million barcodes. Possibly. I don’t know who has that many barcodes, but it’s a possibility.

The  CS3000 actually mounts as a USB device, so you can grab the barcodes manually and not have to install a bunch of drivers. And because the CS3070 mounts as a flash drive, you can install software onto it, and after setting up an autorun file on the unit, whenever you plug it in it’ll run the apps you need. So now instead of having one computer that syncs your devices, the device does all the work. I could see this being a fantastic solution for businesses who have gift registries and multiple checkstands. You don’t have to wait for the licensed computer to be open; the license travels with the device.

Android Barcode Scanner Software VS Real Barcode Scanners

We’ve been getting more calls lately from customers wanting to use their cell phone to scan barcodes and track inventory. Usually they reference various applications that interpret barcodes they capture with their built-in camera and assume that should be more than enough. The big one we’ve heard about lately is the Android Barcode Scanner Software, which is built on the Google ZXing Project. While these apps are good enough for consumer scanning of the odd product for online price comparison, they definitely won’t help you track your inventory.

The biggest issue I’ve run into with camera-based barcode scanning is that the devices aren’t designed to scan barcodes. They’re built to get the picture of the dog with the sunglasses when you’re at the farmers’ market, or capture when your buddy’s had a few too many and decided that dancing on the table would be a good idea. Some can zoom, some can focus a bit, but they’re really very average in terms of repeatedly getting a really detailed image of something small. You also run into the issue of illuminating the barcode to better see the contrast between the bars & gaps. Most cameras have an LED flash, which is fine for lighting up stuff a couple feet away. But when the barcode is close enough to get a good read, usually 4-8 inches, the flashes I’ve encountered blow out the contrast or wash out the barcode entirely. It’s just a lot of work for needing VERY ideal conditions.

On the other hand, a real, actual barcode scanner is designed to just scan barcodes. Most 2D scanners can do image capture for things like inventory verification, but the images usually look grainy and horrible. But those scanners can read 1D and 2D barcodes like it’s going out of style. There is a higher cost to get this set up, but you end up making it back in saved time scanning.

Pairing a cordless scanner with a Blackberry or Android phone does require some secondary software, so it’s not all barcode scanning fun & games. CM Software developed wedge software for the Android & Blackberry that allows the CipherLab 1660 barcode scanner send whatever it scans into an open text field. You were probably wondering when I’d start talking up something we sold. Well there it is. The 1660 runs on a couple AAA batteries and with the CM Software wedge, you’re set as a lower-cost data collector.

Opticon’s OPN 2002 can also connect with Blackberries, but it is considerably more expensive than the 1660. However, it runs on a rechargeable battery that charges over mini USB, so there’s a bit of a feature trade off there. These options really are ideal for people needing to scan more than a few barcodes a day. I don’t recommend dropping 300 bucks to scan the occasional Dio CD to see if it’s cheaper on Amazon, but if you’re looking at keeping track of stuff you own or stuff you loan out, it might be a good investment. And if you’re a business owner, going with a legit inventory management system is a no brainer.

Honeywell Xenon Barcode Scanner

Honeywell’s been working on their newest Adaptus Scan engine technology, and with the Xenon 1900 barcode scanner, they’re unleashing Adaptus 6.0 on the market. I haven’t gotten one in my hands yet, mostly just tech specs and whitepapers, but it sounds like they are kicking the imaging competition up a notch.

It’s following the design schema of the 3800g series, with a sleek body that puts it at home in most retail environments. The head of the unit is slightly bigger to house the 2D imager, but otherwise it looks like the 3800g’s older brother. I’m not sure if you can hammer a nail with this barcode scanner, but I’m sure videos will be cropping up on the internet soon enough to test the theory. Unlike other retail scanners, Honeywell had the Xenon 1900 IP tested, so it boasts an IP41 rating. While that’s not a hurricane-proof sealing, it does keep out dust and a bit of water, further enhancing the rough and tumble demeanor of the scanner.

So this Adaptus 6.0 scan engine, it comes in three fantastic flavors, Standard Range, High Density, and Extended Range, similar to what we’re used to seeing from the industrial side of things. They’ve also put the DS9808 and its capabilities in their sites, upping the motion tolerance of the Xenon 1900 to 240 inches per second. A little back of the envelope math converts that to a nimble 13.6 mph, so you could theoretically scan a barcode off of me when I’m cruising around on my bicycle. That’s not too shabby at all.

If you need some wireless scanning, the Xenon 1902 may be for you. Bluetooth Class 2 communication gives you about 33 feet of radio range, which should be plenty for most retail locations. It also fires data back to the communications cradle or Bluetooth-enabled device at 3 Mbit/s, so you shouldn’t see much, if any delay between scanning and displaying the data.

All this and a 5 year warranty for corded & 3 year warranty for cordless, and you have a barcode scanner that may be the last you need. Until something even more spectacular comes out. I’m still waiting for a barcode scanner with a bottle opener built into it.

Even today, people fear barcode scanners

As part of being a huge nerd product manager/marketing dude, I need to keep up with random tech blogs & journals to see if there are “emerging markets where we can leverage our unique offerings.” Or it’s fun to read articles about POS gear from people outside of the industry. Take your pick. Case in point, this article about a girl in Pennsylvania who claims a barcode scanner caused burns on her face and gave her Tourette’s syndrome. It’s very interesting that technology that is very much integrated into our daily lives can still be so foreign to a large portion of the populace.

After many many episodes at work of a coworker saying “Hey, check out this page” only to look up and get blasted in the face with a 2D imager’s techno flash dance party illumination, I feel like I can state that no, light from a barcode scanner cannot cause physical harm. And that revenge is best served when they’re on the phone.

The article also reminded me of a customer interaction right after I started working here. It was the owner of a business with his lawyer on a conference call, wanting to verify/dispute the claim that one of their employees suffered eye damage from looking directly into an LED barcode scanner. I had been working here all of… a month… so I had a little inkling that it wouldn’t hurt but I still asked my supervisor, who promptly started laughing. Being the uninformed brand new employee I was, I said that maybe if the person stared into the beam all day everyday for a year, they could quite possibly have something that happens that is different from if they didn’t do that. Pretty vague, but I like it. I was also trying not to giggle at that point.

The beam LED barcode scanners emit can’t hurt you, otherwise LED lightbulb manufacturers would be in hot water. Laser barcode scanners still have the same warning you see on laser pointers, and that’s because it’s more focused energy. Some of the stronger scanners (class II & class III lasers) could cause problems with prolonged exposure, but manufacturers wouldn’t build a product to be used by adolescents if it could cause blindness. That’s how they go out of business.

Motorola MT2000

Hey it’s been a while since I made a post. Like over a month. That’s not a good way to build a readership. But here it is, some new gear from our friends at Motorola. The MT2000 is an upgrade and replacement over the old Phasers, and it seems to try to bridge the gap between barcode scanner and batch data collector.

There are two flavors of the MT2000, the MT2070 which is batch and bluetooth, and the MT2090 which has an 802.11b/g radio built in. You also get your choice of laser scanner, 2D imager, or a high density 2D imager, so you only have to pay for the barcode scanning you need and nothing extra. As fantastic as the laser barcode scanner is, I definitely recommend the 2D imager. Motorola’s made great strides in their 2D imaging technology, and the MT2000 definitely shows the fruits of their labor. This is the same imager that’s found in the DS9808, a presentation scanner fast enough to keep up with grocery store scanner/scale combos. It’s pretty badass.

The MT2000 has a similar design to the Phaser, looking like something you’d imagine Commander Riker would be using to shoot aliens. Phaser is definitely an apt name for the product. It’s pretty comfy to use, and the balance of the device prevented wrist strain during extended scanning. Motorola also beefed up the durability on the MT2000, giving it a drop resistance of 6-feet to concrete and a “sneeze-proof” IP54 rating.

Overall, the unit has a good design and should fit in well at retail establishments or warehouses alike. It runs Windows CE 5.0 Core with a default barcode/quantity application installed by default. While in bluetooth mode, the MT2000 can send barcode data individually or in batches to your computer, and can filter by location.

I spent the better part of two weeks working with a MT2090, which is the WiFi flavor of this line, and I can definitely see it fitting into businesses that may need to do batch scanning but need a bit more than a Honeywell Voyager BT in memory mode or an Opticon OPN2001. By default, our version sent data to the communications cradle and on to whatever text field happened to be active. Batch data can be delimited by tab or comma, so a combination of a MT2000 and Notepad can make it easy to build CSVs for receiving or even creating purchase orders.

All in all, it’s a good unit. I did try to disable the built-in software, in hopes that I could boot into Windows CE by default, but was unable to do so. This could make it a little bit more difficult for developers to get their software onto the MT2000, but according to Motorola, MCL is also supported, so if you are developing within MCL you should be set.

Honeywell’s Ending Some Products’ Lives

After Honeywell bought HHP and Metrologic, they ended up with a few products that overlapped. And nobody wants overlapping products, it causes split ends. So they’ve been slowly whittling away the excess products, getting their catalog into lean, mean, fighting machine status. The current round of end of life products are from the Metrologic side, and their replacements more than make up for this loss. There’s a handy dandy table at the bottom of the post if you’re really looking for more info.

VoyagerHD & VoyagerPDF: While these scanners provided pretty solid features for Metrologic (4 mil barcode scanning capability and a laser scanner capable of reading PDF417 barcodes, respectively), the HHP products and even newer Metrologic products did the same and for about the same price. VoyagerHD can be replaced by the high density VoyagerGS, which is a better all around laser scanner. For the VoyagerPDF, they recommend getting the 3800g PDF scanner. For its price, nothing beats the 3800g lineup.

MS1890 Industrial Focus: I felt bad for this product. It came out right before the merger, and half of HHP’s lineup does the same with greater cachet. The 4800i industrial 2D scanner should replace the industrial focus and then some.

MS7320 InVista: Pretty glad this is getting replaced by the Solaris, since we have a solid video showing off how amazing it is.

MS2320 StratosE: For a while I’m pretty sure there were about 8 different Stratoses (Stratii?) Thankfully, they’re whittling it down to the best and the brightest. The MS2420 Stratos is the new replacement and that thing is a beast.

IS1650 Focus: We never really listed this scanner, mostly because it’s designed for automation and we’re big into point of sale. It’s like a Focus with the handle knocked off, but they make better products and now it’s done for. The MS4980 VuQuest is replacing it, and that scanner’s pretty fast so good on them.

And here’s the handy chart!

If You Had:	You Will Want:
VoyagerHD	VoyagerGS HD
VoyagerPDF	3800G PDF
MS1890 Industrial Focus	4800i
MS7320 InVista	MS7280 Solaris
MS2022 StratosE	MS2420 Stratos
IS1650 Focus	MS4980 VuQuest

Datalogic Gryphon BT Barcode Scanner

So I made the words for this and didn’t think it’d go live, but hey, it’s out there for sale and buying stuff is great, right? The relatively new Datalogic Gryphon I GBT4100 is out there and ready to buy, and it has a fantastically long name.

The Gryphon BT is a new premium cordless barcode scanner. I didn’t know there were premium barcode scanners, but this is one of them. It uses a Bluetooth 2 radio to maintain contact with the base station or bluetooth-equipped device, giving you about 98 feet of radio range. If you happen to get out of range, the Gryphon can switch into a batch scanning mode, storing up to 1,200 barcodes in on-board memory.

What I really dig about this scanner (yeah, serious) is that the charging cradle has an adjustable base that allows the Gryphon BT to act as a presentation scanner as needed. It’s kind of a spendy scanner, so the dual-purpose style really makes it a better choice than buying a cheap presentation scanner and a cheap cordless scanner. And if you’re using your checkstand, I doubt you’re going to want a coworker toddling around your business cordlessly scanning whatever he feels like.

Datalogic rocks the green spot technology on the Gryphon, much like most of their scanners. This makes it pretty solid for the hard of hearing, people in loud places, or people in quiet places where an annoying *BEEP* could illicit glares over library books. And when it’s in the cradle, the green spot turns on automatically, so you have a glowy indicator of where the sweet spot is for scanning. It’s like a little stage on which your barcode may perform.

Loud businesses like garden centers and lumber mills could get away with the Gryphon BT and its green dottiness, and the added ingress protection seal and reinforced body make it a little tougher than some of the cheaper scanners on the market. An IP52 seal can keep water splashes and dust out, with the 5 meaning that windblown dust (saw or otherwise) won’t get in to mess up the electronics, and the 2 referencing the Gryphon’s skill at keeping a light drizzle or splish splash of water out. To keep it safe from clumsy employees, Datalogic built the Gryphon to withstand 6-foot drops to concrete, so even Bird Man Chris Anderson can’t really break it if he drops it.

In conclusion: If you are a tall, clumsy person, and you work in a library, the Datalogic Gryphon I GBT4100 is the scanner for you. If you’re short and adept, this barcode scanner is still pretty radical.