Developers Review: SPS 3000 Aka "Symbol Companion"




The iPaq is neat, it have multimedia capability, MP3 playback and so on
but that's nearly useless in the business world. Symbols handhelds
computers are equipped with barcode readers, have IP 54 (Weather/Water
resistance) and can take a beating as well. Symbol have changed that, and
have made the barcode scanner available for the iPAQ 31/36XX series*.

(* I was unable to confirm if it would fit the 37/38XX series, but there is an
installation option for the PPC 2002 and most hardware for the 36XX series
also work for the newer models.)

After beeing impressed by the "Woshy"-sound it made when you first turn
it on, there were a few problems to overcome:

At first; when installing the SDK and drivers (http://devzone.symbol.com),
it would not proceed; it could not find eVtools; because i only had eVB
installed. I had to install eVC++ - THEN the setup program would proceed.

The setup installs 3 packages to the iPaq: (More if you have the RLan version)

* Scanwedge
* Symbol Scanner App
* Symbol Scanner PocketPC Drivers

These files are installed to "\Program files\Scanner files". Contence:

- Scansamp2	a "diagnostic" and configurraation tool.
- Scanwedge	The ubiquitious tool for non--developers.
- Trigger		Workes with scanwedge to launcch a
		scanner application.

Before you can start hacking away on the SDK; you have to perform a soft
reset to activate the driver, if not it will complain about "Cannot open scan
driver - error A000000A". You may also want to install the Flash upgrade
available @devzone. (Currently "SPS3000FlashImage-2.00.07") You may
also want to grab everything related to SPS 3000 from that page, especially
the Programmers guide (SPS3000prg.pdf).

If you have the WLan version, you must also charge the battery for 2.5
hours before you can use it, the CF card have a separate battery that
starts charging AFTER the iPaq is fully charged, so FIRST you iPaq battery
have to be charged; THEN the CF card charges. If you do not have a WLan
card, you only have to charge the ipaq.

Supported Barcodes:

	Code 11, Code 39, Code 93, Code128, UPCA, UPCE1, UPCE0,
	UPC/EAN General, EAN8, EAN13, TRIOPTIC, I2of5, D2of5, MSI,
	Codabar.

For those developers familiar with the PDT 27XX/28XX, there is no learning
curve; just start coding. As far as i can see - it's basically the same SDK.

Those of you who doesn't even know what a PDT is; you should check out
the eVB example installed in the SDK directory*.

(* Default = C:\Windows CE Tools\wce300\SPS3000\Samples\VBScanTest)

The SDK for eVB is a ActiveX object (ACTIVESCANLibCtl.ScanControl) and is
just added to your project to provide barcode scanning functionality. There is
so many examples for you eVC++ people so just dive into the \Samples\
directory.

Regards,

Glenn Larsson

(P.S: when attaching the Lanyard; you'll find your pen a very usefull tool)
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