[Info-vax] Hand scanners and VMS.

[Grant Taylor]

On 7/21/22 4:35 PM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Hi.

Hi,

> Lat me just ask, isn't there anyone else having a need to scan products 
> in an assembly line for reporting purposes?

My limited experience with scanners is at Point of Sale (pharmacy) and 
library.  Both of these systems were PC based and ultimately the scanner 
keyed the barcode data in as if the user had typed it in.  So there was 
nothing special from an application point of view.  Venerable Windows 
Notepad.exe and MS-DOS command line worked with the scanners perfectly fine.

> We just need a scanner hanging on the wall that the user can grip, 
> scan and hang it back. This needs sub-second response time, no logins 
> and "always" beeing available for use.

Is there any feedback other than the beep that most scanners make?

Or is this use case more of an inventory / package tracking thing as in 
a given package / article was seen at this point in time?

> It seems as the market thinks that, if you have a hand scanner, 
> you also absolutely have an PC to connect it to.

I don't think that I've ever seen anything not connected to a PC or some 
other computer.

Even your example of an RS-232 connected scanner is still connected to a 
computer, it's just that it's a ways away and not in physical proximity 
to the scanner.

> Now, I'm sure that it will work by having the RS232 optional cable from 
> Honeywell, but that is not as easy to find as the standard USB cable.

Seeing as how the RS-232 connects to a computer /somewhere/, could you 
do similar with the USB?

Conceptually, could you connect one (or more) USB scanner(s) to the host 
computer via USB and interface with it?

If you can do that, then it seems to me like it's a matter of USB cable 
extensions to go from wherever the host computer is to where you want 
the scanner to be.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die