Barcoding general question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Aaron
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A

Aaron

I have a client that wants me to add bar coding to his existing VB
..NET PPC 2003 app. Since I've never done bar coding before on any
platform other than the Palm OS, can someone point me in the right
direction as far as what I need to do to read in barcodes, or what
components would be the best to use. Tutorials and references would
be of great help as well.

Thanks
 
Hi Aaron,

I used barcodes on Symbol PPC's last year. It was very easy/straightforward.
All I did was register on their website to get the API for the device along
with some code samples. After about an hour of fiddling around I was
scanning barcodes. I don't believe there is a generic barcode API for the
..NetCF but the device that your client is using should be able to provide
you with such information. I know that Intermec and Symbol offer API's on
their websites, not sure about the rest though.

Hope this helps.

Jez
 
I have a client that wants me to add bar coding to his existing VB
.NET PPC 2003 app. Since I've never done bar coding before on any
platform other than the Palm OS, can someone point me in the right
direction as far as what I need to do to read in barcodes, or what
components would be the best to use. Tutorials and references would
be of great help as well.
Click to expand...

I am currently using Symbol PPT-8846 handheld barcode scanner with
32MB, WinCE, and .NET Compact Framework already installed. It has
barcode scanning and wireless (802.11b) functionalities. Symbol comes
with program library SDK to handle barcode scanning (among many other
things) that you can download from their web site. I simplify one of
their VB form in their basic sample program and use it in my
application.

Mine is Win CE, and you intend to use PocketPC 2003. You need slightly
different software and library from what I need. I describe what I use
anyway as a reference:
- Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003
It comes with .NET Compact Framework for SQL Server
I am sure you need this.
You need to purchase it.
- NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 Redistributable
(for changing background color of command buttons)
You may need this. I am not sure.
You can download it from MS web site.
- Windows CE Utilities for Visual Studio .NET 2003 Add-on Pack 1.1
You may or may not need this for PocketPC 2003.
You can download it from MS web site.
- Microsoft ActiveSync 3.7.1
You probably need this.
You can download it from MS web site.
- Symbol Mobility Developer Kit v1.1 for .NET
I am sure you need this.
You can download it from Symbol web site.

Obviously, you may want to use a handheld from other vendor instead of
the one from Symbol. In that case, you need to go to their web site to
see if they have a SDK that you can download and examine.

Jay Chan
 
Note also that many vendors have a way to wedging the scanned data into the
keyboard input stream, so you may not need an API at all. You may not even
need to know that a scanner is connected to the device...

Paul T.
 
I would look around Aaron. Most bar code scanners including those that can
be purchased for attachment to most Popular PDA's today include software
with the scanner that takes the input from the scanner and passes it through
the input stream. This means there is absolutely nothing for you to do
except to place the user inside an edit field to receive the input. Your
app will just act like the user just typed the data in manually.

Good luck,

glenn
 
Yes, I'm aware of that, my question was directed towards coding
though...how would I code that in VB .NET to see if there was anything
in the input stream. If there was a value after the scan, I'd then
pass that into a function to do a database lookup, otherwise I'd throw
up a message box indicating that the scanner isn't supported by the
application.
 
If it's a keyboard wedge, there's no way to know the data came from a
scanner or manual keyboard typing.

-Chris
 
The answer, as might guess, is, it depends." In this case, it depends on
what hardware you are using. If Symbol, then certainly, use the Symbol
APIs. There are some other devices that use keyboard style input, so data
goes directly to a text window that has focus. While, other devices are
simply connected to the serial port, and standard serial APIs or add-ons may
be used (example, CFSerialIO from my homepage, or Serial from
opennetcf.org).

Dick

--
Richard Grier (Microsoft Visual Basic MVP)

See www.hardandsoftware.net for contact information.

Author of Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications, 4th
Edition ISBN 1-890422-28-2 (391 pages) published July 2004. See
www.mabry.com/vbpgser4 to order.
 
Unless you somehow configure the scanner to prepend or append a special tag
indicating to your code that it came from the scanner...

Basically, you don't *want* to know that you've got a keyboard wedge, if
that's what you're doing! The scanner is a simple alternative for the user
of the system to enter data. If he wants to, he can hand-enter the data
with the SIP or a real keyboard. Barcoding is simply a shortcut and your
code does its very best to completely ignore it.

Paul T.
 
Hi Jay, (e-mail address removed)

Thanks for mentioning the s/w reqd for devp the appln in detail.

I'm very new to this and looking for some sample barcode appln for Symbol RF
Scanners. I need to scan barcode & check if the barcode is valid or not
against SQL Server 2000 database and get the item details.

Can you please send me any sample application that can help me in doing this?

I've a doubt. I've got a demo symbol mc9060 scanner and tried to scan a
barcode opening a Pocket Word application. But it didn't scan the code,
unlike other scanners like Intermec ScanPlus... I can scan the barcodes to
notepad as well.

But I've foung 1 appln in the scanner called Rapid Deployment Client V1.1
I ran that appln and could see the scanner is firing the IR and scanning the
barcode labels. Though I couldn't see the text scanned, but this appln says
OK or Unidentified Bar Code in the textbox ( which shows "Waiting for
scanning...")

Can you please tell me how exactly make it work.

Thanks in advance.
 
I believe you are going to need the Symbol Mobility Developer Kit v1.1 for
..NET

Go to http://devzone.symbol.com/ and sign up. It is here that you will find
the SDK and sample code on how to do what you want to do.

I hope this helps.

Yosh
 
Hi Yosh,

I've downloaded the SDK. But there are quite a few applications. I've found
2 or 3 applications for the barcode scanners.

Can you please direct me which is the one that can be used scanning a barcode.

And do I need to activate anything for making the scanner to synchronise
with the application. Right now I found that the scanner trigger is working
only if I run the Rapid Deployment Client appln. I don't know what it is

Any inputs for this please

Regards,
 
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