Overview of Socket Mobile Scanners

Hello, this is Brian from POSMicro, and today we are going to be talking about some scanners from Socket Mobile. Now, these guys you might ve seen around already: at a local shop, at a farmer s market, or perhaps even a recreational or medical dispensary, depending on your state s laws on the matter. Now, these are usually paired with an iPad or other type of tablet. These scanners are ergonomic, easy to pair, and durable. Now there are a few model families to the socket mobile scanners, and we ll talk about a couple of them today. First of all, the one in front of me here is the socket series 7, CHS Series 7. These ones are about as simple as they come. These run in three different model types: you have a 1D imager, a 1D laser, and a 1-and-2D Imager. The one I have before us here is the 1D Imager. See here, it lays down a nice red bar for scanning.

Now, there are three different families, main families, with these scanners, the Series 7 as we see before us here. There s also the 700 series, both in a SocketScan version and a DuraScan version. I don t have these to show you today, however, they are pretty much the same size, and have the same functionality. One nice big button right here, to actually do the scanning, and a button here for pairing. It fits nice and easily right in the hand, like that. A little different than your traditional barcode scanner, but nice and easy to hold onto, no extenuation [over-exertion] of the wrist, no chance of getting too much arthritic pain. Now, this specific scanner comes in six (6) different colors. We see here the Dark Gray, there s also Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, and White, along with that.

Now dealing with the CHS Series 7 scanners, the 7Ci, the 7Mi, and the 7Qi are the three models that this comes in. The Ci, as we see before us here, that s the 1D barcode scanner in the imager style. The Mi is a 1D Laser, better for scanning at a distance. And the 7Qi is the multiple 1D/2D Imager which will allow you to scan both 1D and 2D barcodes (obviously). Both this Imager here and the 2D imager can read off of LCD screens. Super handy if you re sending out mobile coupons to your customers.

Now the other two families, the Series 700 in the SocketScan and the DuraScan, both of those break down into the same three families as well: 1D Imager, 1D Laser, and 1D/2D Imager. The only difference here is this scanner [CHS Series 7] has a standard housing, the Series 700 SocketScan has an antimicrobial housing, and the Series 700 DuraScan is hardcore. It is specifically designed for industrial usage and is hardier because of that.

The power for these scanners is fairly easy. Underneath here we have just 2 AAA batteries. An easy quarter turn here opens up the battery bay, and you can see here the two batteries. Now, these ones come with rechargeable batteries. The charging port right here for standard USB-connected power supply. It plugs in thusly. This [the batteries] can also be replaced with standard AAA batteries if desired or in a pinch and you don’t have a charging solution set. Now for the Series 700 SocketScan and DuraScan, they are rechargeable NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) AA batteries, instead of this AAA. And you also have the option of a charging cradle, if so desired.

Pairing the Socket to an iPad is incredibly simple, and I ll walk you through the process. First of all, we have the connection button which we will hold down until we get the recognition [confirmation beep] that it is set to Discoverable. Hop into your iPad Settings, under Bluetooth, we should see that the scanner comes up here, in the Other Devices. Should show up in just a second. We will tap to connect, wait for the confirmation, and there we are. The scanner is in Application Mode and can be used as an HID, or Human Interface Device, meaning that any application that you pull up, you should be able to scan, and have interaction between the scanner, I have here Square opened up, which is one of the main programs that uses these scanners fairly often. Here I ll take a look at one of these barcodes. You can see there that it has pulled up the facial tissue SKU which I stored earlier. We ll do the same here with this wearable terminal that I have. And sure enough, there we go. Now if you want to use this as a keyboard device, to scan things into, say, Notepad, as you would generally. You would need to load the SocketScan 10 software to allow the scanner to go into SPP, or true Application Mode, to be able to scan things into a notepad or similar app.

Now when you break it down, in my opinion, the best option for you folks either finding yourself, regardless of which scanner model family you go with; the best option is going to be the 1-and-2D Imager [Series 7Qi, S740, D740 and above]. That’s going to take care of anything that you might be scanning now, anything that you might need to scan in the future. It is more or less what they call future-proof and able to cover a large range of different functionalities.