The Granit user guide has a performance chart that says – “Granit 1980i/1981i Scanner Typical Performance (200 lux).   So what is this “lux” thing?

Lux is the amount of ambient light in the area.  A full sun, no clouds in the sky, summer day would be considered about 100,000 Lux.  A completely dark area with no ambient light at all would be 0 Lux.  A typical office environment is usually between 500 – 700 Lux.  Granit scanner are used typically in a warehouse which are usually dimmer than offices.  It would be safe to say that a warehouse would measure about 200 Lux of ambient lighting.

Having some of the industries most popular and capable label printers goes hand-in-hand with premium supplies for them. From simple direct thermal shipping labels to rugged polyester labels for outdoor use, Honeywell has supplies to handle the requirements of the most demanding environments.

Honeywell genuine labels, RFID tags, receipts and ribbons support a broad range of barcode printing applications in mild to harsh environments. While a wide variety of these are offered as take-from-stock products for fast delivery, Honeywell will also customize the label material, configuration, size or any other feature to meet even the most challenging environment. Whether an off-the-shelf or custom solution, Honeywell has media solutions to meet any unique requirement.

To learn more about Honeywell’s selection of labels, receipt paper, wristbands, and RFID tags, contact one of our media specialists at Barcodes Inc.

Former small business owner and Heartland lending expert Damon Maletta has been an advocate for merchants seeking loans. He penned the article “What to Know Before You Owe,” reviewing and rating financing sources available for small businesses based on speed, transparency and risk. He also shared his own personal experience when trying to secure a loan as a business owner. His lending story is a cautionary tale on how to detect deception when partnering with a merchant cash advance (MCA) provider.

To add to his wisdom and excellent tips, here’s how you can avoid putting your cash flow and business at risk with an MCA. Be aware that hiding the true costs of their offerings and repayment terms is a reoccurring issue with MCA providers. Many will even modify the terms of a loan midstream.

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A stable, reliable wireless network has become a core utility for every business today. More so than other business technology, your network has to be able to adapt to the ever changing needs of wireless users.

Zebra’s WiNG Express helps small to mid-size organizations better compete by providing a true enterprise class WLAN that delivers the dependable and secure high performance wireless voice and data required to achieve best-in-class operational efficiency and deliver best-in-class customer service. From the retail store to the warehouse, a production line in a small manufacturing plant or patient bedside in a small hospital, with WiNG Express, you can provide the best wireless experience to your users that’s affordable and easy to manage.

Key Benefits of WiNG Express

• Real enterprise class wireless network performance for small to mid-size organizations with 1 to 1,024 access points.
• A robust enterprise-class WLAN you can easily deploy in minutes.
• The ability to start small and easily scale to support new business needs and a growing workforce.
• Powerful analytics to best manage your WLAN network and its performance.
• Attractive price point for small- to mid-size enterprise-class WLANs — without compromising on enterprise-class functionality

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Simple regular maintenance on your printer can be the key factor in getting the most out of your printer, printhead, and supplies.

The Sato CL4NX and CL6NX series of printers represents their next generation of thermal printers with advanced support for barcode symbologies, character sets and RFID encoding. A product of Sato’s global R&D network the NX Series incorporates value-added features in a world-class design to deliver a printing solution that goes beyond expectations.

There is a mode titled “Hand Held Scanning – Mobile Phone” that optimizes your scanner to read bar codes from mobile phones and other LED displays.  It does this in part by flickering the LEDs.  Last week a business was having trouble reading barcodes off of his laptop so we told him to turn the feature on (by scanning the barcode).  And of course he stopped having trouble.  Note that you don’t have to have this feature on when scanning barcodes off of phones/tablets.  It just helps the cause sometimes.

I wanted to know what the impact was on scanning speed when scanning regular barcodes when this feature was turned on.  So I tested it.

The results – the Xenon 1900 is a little slower (about 15%) with this feature turned on.  That sounds like a lot but the difference in speed really isn’t noticeable.  The Xenon still blows through my scanner board.

So don’t hesitate to use this feature if the application calls for it – even if other barcodes are being scanned that aren’t on a phone or a computer screen.

Shielded Illumination. What is it? In short, it’s a Honeywell-designed feature that minimizes the light emitted from a scanner preventing operators and customers from getting their eyes zapped by the barcode scanner. It significantly reduces the intense illumination often associated with imaging-based scanners.

Is it important? Yes! It allows retailers to manage their point of sale operations quickly, efficiently, and without any customer complaints.

If your business is experiencing network performance issues and you suspect that the Bluetooth scanner is interfering with other devices, you can turn down the power output of the Bluetooth scanner by simply scanning a barcode.  There are four barcodes you can scan in the Xenon/Granit/Voyager 1452/1602g User’s Guides:

• Low Power (1%)
• Medium Low Power (5%)
• Medium Power (35%)
• Full Power (100%).

A by-product when you turn down the power output is reduced range between the scanner and its base/access point/host.  I get asked a lot about the Bluetooth ranges at those power levels – scanner to base station.  So I tested several scanners (because I am a scan-nerd), and here is what I found.  Measurements are approximation – RF isn’t exact.  Also - I stopped at 100 feet because that’s how big my yard is…and because I’ve never seen an application that requires the Xenon to scan that far from the base station.

	Xenon 1902G	Granit 1981i	Voyager 1452g
Low Power (1%) Line of sight between scanner and base With my body between scanner and base	35-40 Feet 10 Feet	35-40 Feet 10 Feet	20 Feet 5 Feet
Medium Low Power (5%) Line of sight between scanner and base With my body between scanner and base	>100 Feet 30 Feet	>100 Feet 30 Feet	40 Feet 28 Feet
Medium Power (35%) Line of sight between scanner and base With my body between scanner and base	>100 Feet >100 Feet	>100 Feet >100 Feet	75 Feet 50 Feet
Full Power (100%) Line of sight between scanner and base With my body between scanner and base	>100 Feet >100 Feet	>100 Feet >100 Feet	>100 Feet >100 Feet

Bottom line is that if you are really concerned about RF interference, don’t be afraid to turn down the power on the Xenon & Granit.  They’ll still have plenty of range. That being said, in the vast majority of cases, the interference has nothing to do with the Bluetooth scanner.

Datalogic has announced that Euro Garages, one of the UK’s largest privately-owned forecourt operators, is the first in the UK to roll out the Heron HD3100 barcode scanners.

Euro Garages, which had acquired 195 Esso sites in the UK from a series of sales that started in 2012, needed a barcode scanning solution at the point-of-sale that would integrate seamlessly with its Verifone chip and pin system. “We looked at a number of options before choosing the Datalogic device,” comments Guy Bickerstaffe, Regional Manager at Euro Garages. “The Heron barcode scanner, which was the only device that was compatible with our Verifone chip and pin system, enables us to scan a customer’s loyalty card to award Tesco’s Clubcard points.”

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Tracking and managing valuable assets is major concern for many industries especially in manufacturing and warehouse environments. Whether you’re tracking a work-in-process or general inventory and assets, the greater accuracy and closer to real-time visibility you can achieve is directly connected to business success.

RFID-based systems provide an immediate and non-line of sight means to capture your inventory or asset collection. However, the most common passive RFID tags and readers have a limited range and still require a user to scan the tags or pass them through a fixed reader portal. This is where Zebra’s WhereNET active RFID solutions can provide the range that can be used over your entire facility, yielding maximum coverage.  With maximum coverage you will have real-time visibility into your entire business and operations, providing you with actionable data in order to make smarter decisions.

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