With the New Burke opening in 2019, we’ll be moving everything from the current building into the new one in the next couple of years. Every object in the building will be touched. This is a great opportunity to add barcodes to labels for ease of tracking. If nothing else, hopefully we’ll be able to make the job of moving everything between buildings easier, even if there’s no long term benefit to processes.
Our collections are cataloged in at least five separate database products. There is no way we’re going to find an off the shelf solution which integrates with all of them. For one thing, one of the databases is no longer sold or supported. It has an ODBC connection, so maybe something could integrate with it, but I’m willing to bet that nothing does out of the box. For another, each collection has its own catalog number scheme, and there’s no guarantee that their database has a field for a separate barcode identifier. I need to be able to use freeform text as barcode labels, so that what gets scanned is the object’s native identifier in its home database.
With that in mind, we’re buying some hardware first and will figure out what software to use with it second. Here’s what we’re getting (prices may vary; this is what we paid in March 2017):
- Zebra GX430t Desktop Thermal Printer (GX43-102510-000)
$435 from Newegg Business - Seagull BarTender 2016, Professional Edition
$285 from CDW-G - Apple iPod Touch, 6th Generation, 16GB
$200 from Apple - Infinite Peripherals Linea Pro 5 (LP5-N2DE-POD5)
$600 from Newegg - Linea Pro 5 rugged case (CS-RMS-LP52D-STR-G/BK)
$40 from Newegg
This particular case allows access to the magstripe reader, in case we can reuse the devices as mobile store terminals in the future.
Because it can be a pain to figure out which label stock and thermal ribbon works with which printer, these are the consumable supplies we’re getting:
- Zebra 17154 2″ x 1″ PolyPro 3000T labels
- Zebra 18927 3″ x 3″ PolyPro 3000T labels
- Zebra 800132-102 3200 High Performance wax/resin ribbon, 2.25″ wide
- Zebra 03200GS08407 3200 High Performance wax/resin ribbon, 3.3″ wide
Update: That’s definitely not the right part number for the 2.25″ ribbon. The differently formatted part number should have tipped me off. The ribbon is the right width, but it comes on a spool the same width as the ribbon, and the printer does not have an adjustable-width ribbon handler; you have to have a 4″-ish wide spool, with the ribbon centered on it. I’m ordering these now, which are probably the right ones:
- Zebra 03200GS06407 3200 High Performance wax/resin ribbon, 2.25″ wide
I’m not sure both widths of ribbon are necessary; I bet you can print the 2″ labels with 3″ ribbon, by wasting 1/3 of the ribbon. This combination of label and ribbon was recommended as archival quality.
The BarTender software will be used to create and print the labels. I went with the professional edition because that got me a lot more flexibility in printing batches of barcodes from catalog numbers exported from the various databases. The version comparison page has a table where the “Data Sourcing” section made it sound like the Basic version wouldn’t work for us, anyway. I haven’t installed BarTender yet, so I don’t know for sure how it works. I’m hoping to use Data Matrix codes rather than QR or Code 128, due to its compactness, resilience, and ability to encode arbitrary UTF-8 strings. QR was the other main contender, but it’s just not as compact. We may use Code 128 in some cases where there already are existing labels with that symbology.
Those Linea Pro 5 barcode/magstripe readers are expensive, dang. But in my so far limited testing, they do work really well. Better than the built in camera with an inexpensive barcode app on my iPhone, anyway. I suspect that’s more the software’s fault than the hardware’s, but if anyone is making really good barcode reading apps for iOS (besides codeREADr, which is a non-starter for requiring a cloud service subscription to use), I haven’t found them yet. I’ll keep looking, though, because it would be nice to be able to use just a $200 iPod in a busy period, instead of having to buy the whole $850 package.
For software, I’ve got some ideas. On the app side, these look useful:
- WebHub IPC Browser
This provides a javascript API to the Linea Pro 5 hardware. I can write simple web apps that interact with the barcode hardware using this. Documentation can be found here. NB: the documentation link there is incomplete — better to just read the sample html and javascript and figure it out from that. - ScanBoard
This provides a virtual keyboard which supports scanning barcodes into any text field in any app (provided you can use third party keyboards there). By itself, not really that useful, but you can combine it with: - Unified Remote
You install a small program on your computer, and then you can use your device as a keyboard and mouse for your computer. (It can do a lot more than that, but this is what I’ll be using it for.) Now the barcode scanner is a keyboard wedge for your computer, and you can use it directly with any application on your computer, including the database clients. For all I know, some collections will be able to use this method to streamline the entire moving process.
My thought right now is that I’ll use the WebHub browser and write a fairly simple web-based asset tracking database with which I can create daily move reports for the collections managers. Hopefully we’ll be able to figure out a way to import transactions in their databases so location information is correct in both the primary database and the asset tracking one.
We’ll see whether that approach works; I’ll talk with some collections managers this week about their current practices.
Another possibility is writing a FileMaker database to do this. There’s this “iLinea FMG” app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ilinea-fmg/id483020112
I don’t know how that works, though; it looks like it uses url schemes, so you might have to switch to the scanner app each time you wanted to scan something. That wouldn’t work. It would, however, make offline scanning fairly straightforward — there are a number of ways to reconcile offline changes once FileMaker Go is back on the network.
I think FileMaker would actually work pretty well here, but I don’t think I can learn it quickly enough to have something ready by the time people need to start using it. But maybe I’ll ask for some training budget to get some FileMaker instruction so that we can make a v2. It seems like if we’re going to have the licenses, we should be using them.
I love how this is coming together. It would be so cool if the public could see what we move on a daily basis.
The logic for skipping objects which aren’t public-facing would be tricky, I think, since the move database won’t have any of that information. But we could definitely have something like a count of objects moved by department, or by destination.
Bah! One of the boxes of ribbon I bought was the wrong part. It’s the right ribbon, but on the wrong width spool. I’ve updated the post with the correct product number, and have ordered a box of the right ribbon of that width. It’s got a lead time of 6-8 days, so I’m going to use the 3″ ribbon with the 2″ labels for now, for testing purposes.
I may be able to wind the ribbon from the wrong spools onto the spools from the correct order, once those ones are used up, though. We’ll see. I might have to make a jig, and the wrong box was under $40, so it might not be worth it.
You don’t really need Linea Pro 5 Scanners. Conventional HID Barcode or QR Code scanners start at around $50 plus. To connect to your iPod touch, maybe just get a bluetooth version for that hassle-free connection. Then you can easily just track the movement of your stuffs.
For the hardware, there are some pretty inexpensive built in options around these days. ie. ScanSKU and Cipher Labs. Both generally sell in then sub $600 range