Datalogic Scanning is celebrating a major milestone and you can get in on the fun.  On April 30th, they produced their one-millionth Magellan Bi-Optic Scanner.  Bill Parnell, President and CEO of Datalogic Scanning, celebrated this event proclaiming, “It is a major accomplishment for the company, and one that will be marked by celebrations and customer recognition worldwide.”

Those celebratory festivities are already in full force with the “Thanks a Million” World Tour, a year-long event which has the historical millionth scanner making appearances at events and trade shows all across the globe. The tour officially kicked off on May 10th at FMI 2010 (the largest food industry event in North America) in Las Vegas and the remainder of the tour includes locations in Mexico, Italy, Costa Rica, France, China, and more, where event participants can see the scanner in action, as well as receive an exclusive Datalogic Magellan World Tour t-shirt. 

This event marks a long-coming milestone, as the brand began its long journey in 1994 when the first Magellan scanner was released. Now an industry standard, the original Magellan scanner was one of the first to feature 360-degree scanning technology, fitting for a product whose namesake was the first explorer to lead an expedition around the world. Since then, the brand has spawned eight different models, including the most recent Magellan 8500Xt, and has been shipped or sold to 97 different countries worldwide.

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What many people don’t realize after the purchase of a handheld scanner, editing capabilities are already programmed in when the product leaves the factory. Scanners such as the Motorola LS2208, Honeywell 3800g or the Datalogic Powerscan are configured with a simple editing tool that allow the users to make changes in the scanner without making costly changes to the software application. 

The most common problem that arises is when the scanner arrives and either the Enter Key has been programmed in or not programmed in at all. For example, when any of the scanners from Motorola –either corded or cordless – are shipped, they are pre-configured with no post amble. In other words the data that is scanned is sent to the screen ‘as is’ with no CR / LF / RETURN or Enter Key. However, many users want the Enter Key to be automatically sent to the application after a scan. This allows users to do a scan one bar code after another without having to hit an Enter Key on the PC keyboard.  

The solution is quick and simple. Get the reference guide or the product manual from you handheld scanner.  Then go to Scan Data format page and scan the Data + suffix barcode. This will add the Enter key or CR/LF to be automatically sent with the data stream. In case you should ever need to remove the CR/LF or Enter Key, just scan the Data as is barcode.  That’s all there is to it. 

The manufacturer’s product manuals provide instructions to do more advanced formatting, such as tabs or other special characters, but this can be tricky. Contact your RACO representative for assistance with additional handheld scanner programming instructions.

In the past year, we’ve been working on creating videos to help demonstrate products, show troubleshooting techniques, and point out solutions to help your business.  We recently hit a mini-milestone with our 50^th video.  

The fine folks from Datalogic stopped by for a visit to show off their products and point out which ones would be useful for certain industries.  This particular demonstration highlights scanning solutions for healthcare environments.  It’s an important distinction because this equipment needs to withstand regular sterilization and operate in such a way as to not disturb resting patients.  Datalogic has created a number of products that do just that and you can see that in the above clip. We’re already ramping up production on more videos to show you what RACO has to offer.  It shouldn’t be that much longer before we hit our 100^th video.  Keep checking back on RACO Industries’s YouTube channel for more helpful tips and solutions.