In the electronics and pharmaceutical industry, the most used 2D barcode formats are DataMatrix and PDF417 which usually contain ANSI MH10.8.2 data encoded with the ISO/IEC 15434 standard, meaning that they may include non-printable ASCII characters.

Technical background

An external keyboard-wedge type scanner needs to be configured to replace special non-printable ASCII characters, so that it can work through a browser app. In particular, ASCII codes [RS], [GS] and [EOT] need to be replaced with strings “{RS}”, “{GS}” and “{EOT}”, respectively.

Also applies to SecurPharm GS1 and/or IFA Data Matrix Symbology.

Note: The character replacement is required only for web-based applications.

Instructions

To avoid additional steps we created an Output Template that already does the replacements for you.

To use it:

1. Download the GS Characters.btpt template
2. Open the template by double-clicking on it
3. Verify that it has been correctly imported in the server settings (click the gear-shaped icon):

In the server settings, you can manage other Output Templates, and you may want to delete the default one so that you won’t have to choose which one to use every time you scan.

At this point, everything should be good to go, and you should be able to correctly scan barcodes containing GS1 special characters by just opening the app and tap the red camera button.

Tip 1: If you want to use Barcode to PC with an Android integrated scanner (PDA) see this: Send barcodes from an Android PDA scanner to a computer.

Tip 2: If you want to further speed-up your scanning process, by opening the app in scan mode, see this article: Speed-up Barcode to PC app launch time.