Cliff Holste, Materials Handling Editor

The News: Datalogic announces a new data collection terminal line that uses a visual signal - a "Green Spot" - to confirm to operators that a bar code has been successfully scanned.

	SCDigest Says:
	The Green Spot is clearly seen on the bar by the user, even in bright sunlight. This provides a visual cue that the bar code was properly scanned. What Do You Say? Click Here to Send Us Your Comments

Why it Matters: Hearing the scanner "beep" to confirm that a bar code has been successully scanned can be an issue in very noisy distribution center or manufacturing environments. This could not only reduce productivity, as operators try to determine if the code was scanned or not, but lead to errors, such as failing to scan an item or double counting when scanning non-serialized bar codes.

In addition, an increasing number of employees would like to wear ipods or other mp3 music players on the job. The visual signal could reduce problems of hearing the scanner beep for operations that allow operators to use those devices now, or potentially allow other facilities to do so that do not permit them now for this very reason, adding to worker job satisfaction.

The Story: Datalogic is a provider of mobile data collection terminals for a variety of applications.

The company say that the Green Spot is a patented approach to scanning in which after a successful bar code scan "a secondary LED projects a Green Spot onto the bar code image. The Green Spot is clearly seen on the bar by the user, even in bright sunlight. This provides a visual cue that the bar code was properly scanned." (See graphic nearby.)

So, it appears that Datalogic has not changed the core scanner, likely sourced from one of the market's scan engine providers, but instead has added an LED to its terminals and associated logic to project the confirmation Green Spot after the mobile terminal detects a success read of a bar code.

This makes sense to us, and we suspect other mobile terminal providers will move to add some sort of visual confirmation option over time.

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