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Sherman, Set the Wayback machine to 1967

Sherman– 1967 Please.

This KarTrak railroad label is probably one of the oldest items in our collection.  The labels were hand-made by attaching strips of red, white and blue reflective material to a piece of 14 gauge sheet steel.  They were all 10 digits long.  Four digits identified the railroad and six identified the car. Each tag cost about $15 to make.

Our Kartrak Tag

The Automatic Car Identification (ACI) system was originally developed by GTE in 1961 and implemented by Dave Collins in 1967.  Dave later went on to form Computer Identics Corp. in Westwood and Canton, MA.

Original 1967 Ad for the Rail Scanning System.

The labels were read by moving beam scanners that were activated by a wheel sensor as the car moved by.  The scanner was mounted along the side of the track in a large metal NEMA enclosure with a hooded window.  It used a Xenon bulb and a four-sided spinning mirror along with a camera-like lens to read the tags.  The decoder used some circuitry to decode the red, white and blue channels from the signal that was reflected back from the tag.  If I remember correctly, the last time I saw one of these a PDP-11 series mini-computer ran the software system for the scanner.

The major problem with the system was dirt. When the labels got dirty they did not read well. The railroads would not clean them and this caused the system to be discontinued in 1974.

The last time I can recall these systems being used or seeing a label in public was in the Washington DC Metro system in the mid 1980’s. Computer Identics Corp. was still maintaining them at this time.

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Fixing a print issue with Fingerprint programming

A large pharmaceutical company is using an ancient lab system that prints cryo labels for test tubes. They replaced Intermec 3400 printers that were almost 20 years old with new PC43T printers. The PC43T runs IPL (Intermec Print Language) and should have been a plug and play replacement. Unfortunately, some of the barcodes that printed on the 3400 no longer printed on the PC43T. The problem was caused by the different designs of the two printers. The PC43T’s labels are centered in the printer instead of all the way to the left (as you are facing the printer) on the 3400. Without getting into too much detail, their label format had to be modified to use the PC43T, but due to the age of the system this turned out to be impossible. The labels are .5 by 1.25 inches:

These are Code 128 barcodes printed with a 5 mil X (narrow bar) dimension.

We wrote a Fingerprint program that ran in the PC43T that intercepted data coming from the host, reformatted it into Direct Protocol (which has a center justify feature) and printed the label. Problem solved.

 

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My favorite scanner – Part 2

I’ve written about the center decode feature in the Intermec EA30 scan engine (see part 1 below) but there are a few other features I’d like to bring to your attention.

Presentation Mode:  Sometimes scanners are used with desktop holders to let a user pass a barcode underneath it and scan hands free. Think of a library check out, a convenience store cash register, or a club scanning ID cards.

Laser scanners typically pulse their laser on and off when they are in presentation mode (which drives me nuts) in order to detect the presence of a barcode.  2D Camera based scanners have an advantage of being omnidirectional and they will have some illumination on to detect a code.

The EA30 does presentation mode right. The scanner uses ambient light to detect a bar code, so no distracting lights come out of the scanner when it’s idle.

The EA30 scanner can be set up to scan more than one barcode at a time.  Take a look at EasySet under Symbologies, and you’ll see the Multicode set up:

You can specify the number and type of codes to scan and because of the way the software scans the image, it’s works as quickly as if you were scanning a single code. Other scanners can read multiple barcodes, but you have to move the scanner around to pick up all of the codes. The EA30 works better than this; the software scans the image so you don’t have to move the scanner. Try it out.

The last feature I’ll mention is the ability to scan both UPC-A symbols and UPC symbols with supplemental codes with one configuration:

Reading both UPC and with one set up is difficult because the large portion of the UPC with supplemental code is a valid UPC-A symbol. The scanner must reliably detect the presence of the supplemental and read it. If you want to test this, use these setting from EasySet:

Consecutive validations = 2
Center decode = on
Supplemental = Transmit if found
Add on security = 100
Imager decode mode = 2D
Initial 1D search = Full

You’ll find these settings in the Symbology section, the Imager Settings, and the Operating Section.

 

 

 

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Running Windows Mobile Device Center under Windows 10

In my previous post I said that Microsoft broke Windows Mobile Device Center is Windows 10. This is true, but there is somewhat of a workaround.

First off, if you use WMDC regularly and you’re using Windows 10, make your life easier and run Win 7 in a virtual machine and use it there.

I saw this tip on getting WMDC running on Win 10 at a Microsoft tech support site.

Click on Start, then type “Services” and launch the services application. Scroll down to the “Window Mobile-2003 based device connectivity” service:

Double click on this and click on the “Log On“ tab at the top of the screen.

Click on the “Local System account” button and turn on the “Allow service to interact with desktop” check box. Apply these setting and go back to the “General” tab and make sure the service is running, then exit the application.

Now click on Start, type in “Mobile Device Manager”, right click on the app and pin it to your task bar. Click on the round green icon in the task bar and WMDC should start.

Put your reader into a dock that’s connected to your PC with a USB cable; you should hear the connection sound. If you hear a loud beep and get a synchronization error, WMDC has crashed. Remove the reader from the dock and restart WMDC. If it doesn’t start, check the log on options in the services app again.

If you do hear the connection sound but WMDC shows “Not Connected”, double click on My PC and you should see your reader in the Devices and drives section:

If you double click on the device you’ll see its file system and you’ll be able to copy files to and from it with Windows File Manager.

It’s not perfect solution, but if you have some quick copying to do, it may help.