Microscan Tips and Tricks: January 2008

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

The Virtual com port driver for the Microscan MSQ hand held is not the same com port driver as the Quadrus Mini com port driver.

It's a totally different kind of driver - all together.

Microscan has released a new feature for decoding bar codes called Q Mode. $100 option now available on the Mini, Mini 3, and Velocity.

It allows the enabled reader to decode images using fewer pixels per element than standard mode with a clean background around the code.

I've seen it actually take 3 times as long to read a 10mil datamatrix code as standard mode with a clean background around the code.

I'm sure it depends on the application.

When Q Mode is enabled, a few more features are turned off: which include multisymbol, large intercharacter gap, BC412, and I 2 of 5 border bar.

Postal codes work only in Q-Mode.

Call us with questions or for a demo.

Microscan has special firmware that you can flash into the MS 860 to improve it's performance when you have quiet zone issues.

We recently had this loaded onto some 860's in this situation and had great success.

As a rule, you want to avoid quiet zone problems but it's good to know that when the label format is inflexible you still have a solution.