Smart Barcode Scanner

What is the use of barcodes if we don’t have the required technologies to read them in the first place? The barcode scanners should have the capacity to read the black and white zebra lines that are present on the products quickly and precisely. The same information should be fed to a computer or any checkout terminal which will identify the barcode with the help of product database. Let’s know the exact procedure in this article.

For an instance, let us consider the barcodes are simple on and off binary patterns where each black line is a one and each white line is a zero.

In real time the barcode scanners do not consider black and white stripes as one and zero. They detect the sequences of these white and black lines and convert them directly into a decimal number. The decimal number will be the output of a barcode scanner.

• The scanner’s head consists of an LED or laser light which is focused on the barcode.
• The light reflects this barcode into another light detecting electronic component called a photoelectric cell. The white areas of this barcode reflect more light and the black areas reflect less light.
• As the scanner scans the code, the cell generates a specific pattern of on-off pulses that corresponds to the black and white stripes. This means for the above shown barcode with (black black black white black white black black), the cell would act as “off off off on off on off off).
• There is an electronic circuit that is attached to this scanner will convert the on and off pulses into binary digits i.e., zeros and ones.
• The binary digits are sent to a particular computer which is attached to the scanner. This computer detects the code as 11101011.

Wireless devices are making a great impact on the world with every passing day. The people who use these wireless devices have increased rapidly. When the radios were first invented, every company has a single goal for their engineers and scientists. The companies wanted them to create the best radio module that the market has ever seen. The efficiency of the radio module should be top notch. But none of them has a clear definition for a perfect radio module. What defines the perfect radio module is something that cannot be defined easily. It normally depends on the tasks that the radio module has to solve.There are some situations where we need to send huge amount of data on a wireless network and in that situation, no one would ask for a power efficient way as they want to transmit the data first. Then there are some other situations where only a small amount of data must be transmitted and then we can opt for power consumption ways. The portable devices usually notify us when there are some occurrences and as these devices us batteries for power, the radio modules in such devices should be as efficient as possible.

There is one radio technology that stands out amongst all kinds of energy efficient radio modules. This technology is capable of sending a suitable amount of data at a relatively cheap cost of energy consumption- Bluetooth Low Energy.