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We have an application here using handhelds to scan barcodes. These handhelds are actually making a remote desktop session towards a server where the application runs. Works fine.

Now we have bought some new Motorola MC55's running 'Windows Mobile 6.1 Classic', and when using the application over remote desktop: it mangles the characters of the barcodes....

I already tried following things:

  • When scanning a barcode on the MC55 itself it is displayed correctly
  • When scanning a barcode via the remote desktop into a notepad session it is incorrect.
  • Played with all options of the 'Remote Desktop Mobile' - no result
  • Disabled 'autocorrect' and 'suggest words when entering text' on the input settings - no result

The strange things is:

  • a barcode which consists of only numbers gets scanned correctly

  • the mangled characters comes through in lower case

  • For some codes \t is mangled in between (should normally be entered after the barcode)

    e.g.:

  • 'PERIN4' becomes 'ERINp4'

  • 'MGZB' becomes 'GZB m'

  • 'BAK664' becomes 'AK664 b'

  • 'MAGBFA01' becomes 'AGBFmA01'

  • '5021879949500' gets scanned correctly

Final solution:

Suppllier of the handhelds said the handheld was sending the characters too fast over the remote desktop connection.

They changed the handheld to wait for 50ms between sending each character, which produced correct results right now.

Scanning a barcode became somewhat slower but it's almost not remarkable to endusers.

Community
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sfonck
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    You should post your solution as an accepted answer so the question doesn't show up in the unanswered list. – Nic Mar 10 '12 at 18:19

2 Answers2

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From the op's update to the question:

Suppllier of the handhelds said the handheld was sending the characters too fast over the remote desktop connection.

They changed the handheld to wait for 50ms between sending each character, which produced correct results right now.

Scanning a barcode became somewhat slower but it's almost not remarkable to endusers.

Mark Henderson
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I'm probably way off, and it's been a long time since I've dealt with barcodes, but could it be a font problem? Do you need to have fonts installed for the barcode in use (MSI, Codabar, Code 39, EAN 13, etc.)?

joeqwerty
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  • Those fonts are needed when you want to print barcodes which is not the case here. The reading of the barcodes works with the other handhelds through remote desktop, it's just this new one which has this problem. – sfonck Mar 25 '10 at 16:04