I’m looking to pick up some barcode scanners to use with iPads.
The documentation shows compatibility with:
Socket CHS 7Ci
Socket CHS 7Xi
The 7Xi is $440, vs the 7Ci at $211.
What’s the advantage of the 7Xi? More rugged?
Also, it seems both scanners are imager based, vs laser based. I’ve used both technologies in the past on desktop POS, and imager based scanners are slow and awful. Are they still slow and awful?
What about compatibility with the 7Mi or 7Pi, which seems to be the laser based versions of the 7Ci? Anyone used those models?
@rmcguire - I know this is an old post, but I wanted to see how your experience has been with the 7Ci. Are you still using them? Still scanning well? There are a ton of other scanners on the market, so just wondering how well these work and what makes them so special to Vin65.
We’ve pretty much abandoned them. The bluetooth constantly disconnects and the dance to get it back is a pain in a busy tasting room. Making the iPads never auto-lock helped but not enough and that caused other issues.
If --V-i-n-6-5-- WD could come up with a wired scanner solution we would seriously consider it.
Everything @ElJefe said…my staff refuses to use them. Their auto-power down timeout is too short, and you can’t change it. It literally is a 1 minute dance to get them working, every time.
Add to the fact that they have to be used with only one iPad, and on a busy Saturday the iPads end up shuffling around the grounds all day, it’s impossible to keep them together.
Someday I might get around to ordering a charging cradle for one and testing it out. Supposedly it keeps it charged and activated so you can just put an item in front of it at any time. It might help with the bluetooth disconnection problem.
Darn! Bummed to hear that. @ElJefe - I remember you saying you had a whole lot of skus in your POS. If the scanners are so unreliable, how does your staff deal with finding the right sku? Search? My client has over 700 non-wine skus split into about 30 different POS categories. We’re supposed to launch POS (they were using Microworks before) in about a week, but I’m still concerned with how long it might take to find the right items to ring up an order.
Would you guys recommend that we not purchase a large amount of scanners? Maybe try just a few to start? We have eight iPads between two tasting rooms, so it would be a bit of an investment to buy scanners for all of them. Note that we also have a touchscreen computer that will be left over from Microworks that has a usb scanner and cc swiper attached - I’m going to test those to see if they will work with Vin65. I might even try hooking a usb scanner and swiper to a chromebook to see if they might work and be an alternative.
We have about 3000 active and semi active SKUs. We have not bothered to put most of them in POS categories. We just search. Most SKUs are 6 digit numbers so keyboard entry is quick. If you consider that scanning just triggers the same search the time difference is not great once you are practiced - in either case it’s a trip to the server and back.
I’d just pick up one scanner and see how it goes for you before buying more. And I’d be interested in hearing how your Chromebook idea pans out.
I would recommend testing the scanners first, before investing a ton of money into something you might not use. I regret buying 5 of them.
If you have a USB scanner on a touchscreen computer running the pos, you should be fine. We don’t have that setup, but I did test that configuration out at one point, and it worked flawlessly.
What we end up doing is putting a small thermal printed sticker on all our items with the name, sku, and price. Everything that has a UPC barcode on it is entered into the computer, and scans with the scanners if needed. Everything that doesn’t have a barcode, we print the SKU as the barcode on the sticker.
Our SKUs are five digits long, so most of the time our staff just keys the sku into the search field on the POS. It usually ends up being the fastest way, since we have too many items to organize effectively using the POS categories.
After hearing what you guys said about the scanners, we had decided to do pretty much what you suggest, Ryan. Our SKUs and UPC codes are the same, and we have both the barcode as well as the SKU printed on the price sticker, so the SKU search seems the way to go. The SKUs generated by Microworks are only 4 digits, so lookup would be quick, though we are still trying to figure out what format our SKUs will have and how to generate new ones since Vin65 doesn’t have that capability built in.
