Scan

What the camera reads

One viewfinder, three kinds of code, and a rule about which of them is allowed to open a record without asking.

The camera decodes QR, Aztec, Code 128, Code 39, Code 93, Data Matrix, EAN-13, EAN-8, PDF417 and UPC-E. For a serial stamped on a case with no barcode, Photograph a serial instead switches to a reader for printed text.

What happens next depends on what the payload is. A Starkive asset tag (or a pairing code, when there’s a Mac on your network) is recognised straight away: there is nothing to decide. Anything else settles for a moment and then offers what it found, because a frame showing one barcode proves only that one barcode was legible in that frame, not that the label carries one.

Scan is a tab, so there’s nothing to close. The line over the viewfinder reads Point at an asset tag. When a Mac running Starkive is on your Wi-Fi it reads Point at an asset tag, or a pairing code on your Mac, because then this screen can pair too.

What it looks like

The camera screens can't be captured on a simulator, so these are the steps either side of it: choosing how to identify the machine, entering it by hand, and the confirmation.

Reading a hardware label

A manufacturer's box carries three or four barcodes. Which one you get should not come down to which one the light favoured.

A frame is not a label. The scanner used to record the first payload to decode, and on a box carrying a part number, a serial and a product code that is whichever the decoder resolved that frame. So scanning an Apple box recorded the part number about as often as the serial.

Now every code in frame is read, and the payloads accumulate over a short quiet window before anything is decided. One payload in the window means one answer. Several means a chooser, and the chooser is the point: where the identifier inside each payload says nothing about which value is which, the honest answer is to ask.

A leading S is the awkward case. It opens the serial marker in the MH10.8.2 prefix and it also opens plenty of real serials, and with no printed line to settle it both readings are offered. Picking one would be the guess.

When it asks which one

Several codes in one frame, one flat list, and the order is decided by what each payload says it is.

A barcode carries a data identifier before its value, standardised in ANSI MH10.8.2. 1P means customer part number, S means serial. Those characters ride inside the payload, so a serial barcode identifies itself and nothing has to be guessed from position or from which symbol decoded first. On this screen the identifier is the whole of the evidence, because there is no printed line to weigh it against.

The list comes back in three groups, and never ranked inside a group:

• Anything the identifier called a serial, first.
• Anything carrying no identifier this app knows, next, in the order it was read. An unknown identifier produces one of these rather than a guess.
• Anything the identifier called something else, last: a part number, a product code, or a value the label named as neither.

Each row carries the value and where it was read, and nothing more. There is no score, no percentage and no badge, and the row does not repeat what the label called it: you are holding the box, and the app telling you what it says reads as hedging.

One barcode, two rows

The case that surprises people, and the reason it is not a bug.

A single-character identifier is a weak signal. S opens the serial identifier and it also opens plenty of real serials, so a payload like SC02NQCC6FY17 has two honest readings: the whole string, or the string with the marker taken off. Both go on the list, next to each other, and the person holding the box settles it by looking at the print.

A multi-character identifier is a strong one. 1P, 30P and 1T are digit-then-letter, which is how the standard spells its qualified identifiers and is not how manufacturers open serials. Those are removed without asking, so 1PZ0QX0007L is offered as Z0QX0007L.

What is never offered as a serial

One rule, and it closes a fault that would be invisible until an audit.

An all-digit payload of 8, 12, 13, 14 or 18 characters is a retail or logistics code: a UPC, EAN, GTIN or SSCC. Every retail box carries one, and it is the same number on every unit of that model. Recording one as a serial makes a register that cannot tell two laptops apart, so it is classed as a product code and demoted before any identifier is considered.

Your own asset tags never reach this screen at all. A tag the app can prove is ours fires straight away and abandons anything else in the frame, because somebody pointing at a tag wants the record, not a menu.

The printed chooser works on the same screen shape and different evidence. See Capturing a serial for a label read as text, where the words beside a value are what decide the order.

The result card

A hit is drawn over the live camera. The camera keeps running.

A scan that found something used to close the screen and open the record: camera down, sheet up, hunt for Verify, tap, close, reopen the camera for the next machine. On a walk-round that is the whole job, and the record is a screen nobody asked for. The operator is holding the machine and knows what it is.

So the card sits at the bottom of the viewfinder and the viewfinder stays usable behind it. The card carries the asset tag, the machine’s described name, and the reason it is on the list, in the same words the register uses.

• Verify stamps the machine as seen. It’s sized for a thumb pressed one-handed at arm’s length, with the other hand holding a machine.
• Check out or Check in hands the machine to somebody, or takes it back, right from the card.
• Open is there for the times you do want the record, one tap away rather than the default.
• Scan next clears the card so the next machine can be read.

A verification that did not record says so on the card, in the same place a successful one says Verified. A refusal must not be quieter than a success.

When the camera will not work

Five states, five sentences, and one rule about which buttons may be offered.

The line over the viewfinder is the camera’s own account of itself, and it is not a single error message. A refused permission, a device that cannot scan, a camera another app is holding, and a session that stopped are four different troubles with four different remedies, and collapsing them into one sentence names no remedy for any of them.

• Starting the camera… while the session comes up.
• Point at an asset tag, or a pairing code on your Mac when it is running.
• Camera access is off. Turn it on in Settings, or add it by hand. with Open Settings.
• Camera scanning isn’t available. Add it by hand instead. The Simulator has a camera and still can’t scan, which is why the sentence isn’t “no camera”.
• The camera is busy. Another app is using it. Close it and come back, or add it by hand. There is no retry button here on purpose: nothing in this app can take the camera back from whatever is holding it, and a button that fails in place teaches somebody that the buttons are decorative. Leaving and coming back is the fix.
• The scanner stopped. Add it by hand instead. The underlying error goes to a log, not to the one line you read at arm’s length.

On an iPhone that can read NFC, the trouble sentences end read an NFC tag or add it by hand instead, because Read an NFC tag is still on screen and needs no camera.

The three alternatives

They are different jobs, which is why they are three buttons rather than one.

• Photograph a serial instead opens the serial reader. It is a different screen because it is a different technology and a different promise: nothing it produces is applied without somebody confirming it.
• Sweep a rack instead closes this sheet and starts a sweep. One asset you are holding, versus a rack you are walking past.
• Add it by hand needs no lens at all, so it survives every one of the failures above. A rubbed-off barcode, a machine with no label, a refused permission or a cracked lens used to mean the fleet could not be added to, on the device sold for recording hardware while standing in front of it.

The alternatives stand down while a result card is up. They are ways of answering “this scan is not going to work”, and one just did.

Reading an NFC tag

A tag read needs no lens, so it works even when the camera doesn't.

Read an NFC tag sits above the camera buttons. Tap it and hold the top of your iPhone against the tag. iOS shows its own sheet while it reads.

A tag this app wrote brings up the same card as a scanned code, with Verify, Open and Scan next. Anything else is refused by name: That tag wasn’t set up by Starkive. or No asset on this phone uses that tag. Cancel Apple’s sheet and nothing is shown; the camera and the button come straight back.

You don’t have to start from Scan. Tap a tag with the phone and it opens that record, on a phone that has your register. The record comes from the register on the phone, so it works with no signal. If the app is closed, iOS may show a banner first, and nothing happens until you tap it. Opening a record records nothing: Verify is still its own tap, and nothing is ever recorded by walking past.

To write a tag, open the record, tap •••, then Write NFC tag, and hold the top of your iPhone against it. The tag holds a link to the record, never the record itself. See Tag a machine with NFC. The button isn’t shown on an iPad or a phone without an NFC radio.

What the scan does not decide

The camera reads. It does not file.

A scanned payload that is not a serial does not become one. If the barcode says it is a part number, the serial field on the intake form stays empty and says why: That barcode is the part number, 1PZ0QX0007L. Scan the one beside “Serial No.” or “S/N” instead. A wrong serial looks answered and nobody re-checks it; an empty one asks to be finished.

A value that came from printed text rather than a barcode is offered for confirmation, because there is no checksum behind it. A barcode decode is checksum-validated, so a successful read is shown as settled text.

And a search term is a question, not data. If you searched the register for something and tapped add, what you typed is offered as a chip you can spend on the serial, the make or the model, rather than being written into the serial column on your behalf.