I am experiencing a barcode scanning issue with a Zebra TC27 terminal, whereas scanning with a phone camera—whether on an iPhone or an Android device—works correctly.
There seems to be a focus loss or an automatic navigation issue after scanning. The problem is random: sometimes it is possible to scan several barcodes continuously, but at some point it becomes necessary to tap the screen to restore focus to the field that contains the barcode. This is annoying because the main advantage of this type of terminal is scanning speed. Having to watch the screen and tap it when needed between scans completely negates that benefit.
In AppSheet, the options Auto-save, Auto-reopen, and Advance forms automatically are enabled for the barcode scanning view. This is a child form, and the return to the parent form is triggered by an Event Action when Form saved.
To make it work on the Zebra terminal, the Scannable option is not enabled on the column that stores the barcode.
The TC27 is configured using the DataWedge application. I enabled “Send Tab Key” in the Keystroke Output section. Enabling “Send Enter Key” instead of “Send Tab Key” does not change the behavior.
I also tried adjusting the delays in “Key Event Delay” and “Inter-Character Delay”, without success.
Disabling “Multi-barcode scanning” did not help either.
Has anyone in the community experienced a similar issue with a Zebra terminal ?
If you have “Auto-save” and “Auto-reopen” for your barcode scanning view, that view should just automatically save and then re-open continuously until the user taps “Cancel”. At which point the navigation would automatically return to the Parent view. You would not want ANY navigational type actions applied to the Form Save behavior of this barcode scanning view. If do have such an action, maybe it is interfering with the natural flow of the “Auto-save” + “Auto-reopen”??
I don’t know anything about the Zebra terminal but this seems odd to me. I do understand that the Zebra device is an Android based device. It should be running your app HOSTED inside of the AppSheet Android container app. I would think the “Scannable” option would be necessary so AppSheet knows to send scanned barcodes into the field.
Honestly, I’d be surprised if you needed to mess with any of the Zebra device settings. As long as your app activates the correct barcode reader for scanning, enabling “Auto-save” + “Auto-reopen” and setting the “Scannable” option on the column should be all you need to do…I would think.
I have an order table (parent) an an item table (child) and i use this little trick to specify the number of items i want to scan : Auto re-open only a number of times
If I enable “scannable” option, the android device opens the camera instead of the internal imager
I’ve just tried a solution: disabling the Gboard keyboard and enabling a replacement keyboard from the Play Store instead. I installed “Simple Keyboard”, and to my great surprise, it works
And to think that I spent hours exploring all the Zebra configuration options, with no result !
