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.

Metrologic Focus Review

I just love posting video links apparently. The Metrologic Focus and FocusBT are two really solid imagers from our Metrologician friends, soon to be Honeywelled. Yes, Honeywell, the company that makes everything, will now be making barcode scanners as well. Rocket Fuel and thermostats, that’s diversification if I ever saw it.

So yeah, things to know about the Focus. It’s a 2D barcode imager, so it actually takes a photo of the barcode and then analyzes the data. This means you can get a totally biffed up barcode, and the Focus will parse out the good parts of it until it can make a complete barcode. And it does this really quickly.

The barcode scanners basically run a linux derivative, or so I’ve been told, which means that they can be programmed to send just the data you need. Well, after a lot of work, they now have that in the form of EasyID. This lets you scan the barcode on the back of a state ID or driver’s license, and it’ll send the pertinent data to whatever application you’re running. It’s excellent for places that do credit card applications, and eliminates the errors from new typists or having trouble distinguishing between l & I.

So here’s the video, enjoy.