Barcode Scanner System – An OverviewRetail shop owners know how it feels when their customers have to stand in a long line to get their bills. If you are one of those shop owners, the tough times are over for you! Now, a barcode scanner system can help you. A bar code is a visual representation of information that is designed to be read by a machine. These bar codes are read by optical scanners or are scanned with the help of an image of the barcode taken by a video camera that is then decoded by special software. The optical scanners are termed as barcode scanners. If we differentiate the various barcode scanner systems on the basis of technology as the criteria, there are basically four types. These include pen type readers, laser scanners, CCD readers and camera-based readers. All of them are different in the technology they use and even their features are different. Let us find out what are the major differences between all these. A pen type barcode scanner system is one that consists of a fixed light source in addition to a photo-diode. These two components are placed adjacently in the tip of a pen. This tip is moved across the bar code and in this way the information in the barcode is read. The diode is used to read the intensity of the light and a waveform is generated. This waveform measures the spaces in the bar codes and the widths of the bars. This waveform is then read by the scanner system. The earliest and cheapest traditional barcode scanners utilized a fixed light source and a photo sensor. The photo sensor was manually scrubbed across the surface of the bar code and through this the code was ultimately decoded. However, the latest scanner in this field is a laser barcode scanner system. It uses a galvanometer-mounted mirror and uses the laser beam as the light source. A CCD barcode scanner system uses almost hundreds of tiny light sensors. Each light sensor can be considered as a separate photo-diode and these are lined up in a row. The major difference between a CCD reader and a pen type or laser scanner is that the former takes into account the emitted light from the bar code, whereas laser readers measure reflected light of a particular frequency. The camera based barcode readers are also known as 2D imaging scanners. They use a small video camera which is used to capture an image of a bar code. It also uses CCD technology. So, in this article you have got an overview of the various scanning methods used by different types of barcode scanners. Whatever barcode scanner system you buy, make sure that you get it from an authentic manufacturer, so that it can help you boost up your profits! |