Hello,
We are developing an app for a Zebra TC20 device in order to perform inventories (we use a handheld Zebra RFD8500 reader to read RFID tags).
We are interested in locating tags with the RFD8500 using only the barcode of the tags instead of the full EPC.
Example: suppose we have 3 tags:
- Tag 1 -> Barcode: 8433594013132 // EPC: 843359401313200001723799
- Tag 2 -> Barcode: 8433594013132 // EPC: 843359401313200001723158
- Tag 3 -> Barcode: 8433594013300 // EPC: 843359401330000001832435
As we can see, Tags 1 and 2 start with 8433594013132. We want the RFD8500 to beep when we approach it to the tags just using its EAN instead of the full EPC.
In Zebra Docs (https://techdocs.zebra.com/dcs/rfid/android/2-15/apis/reference/com/zebr...), there is a method to make the RFD8500 beep when you are close to a tag using its EPC (tagID):
public void Perform(java.lang.String tagID, java.lang.String epcMask, AntennaInfo antennaInfo)
(Following the previous example -> Perform(843359401313200001723799, null, null); will make the handheld device beep when we are close to the Tag 1, but it will not beep when we are close to Tag 2, because is a different EPC)
Apparently, you could pass an EPC Mask as parameter in order to look for non-specific item from a group (as we can read in "What's Next" section of https://techdocs.zebra.com/dcs/rfid/android/2-15/tutorials/locate/):
Perform(843359401313200001723799, "CERTAIN_MASK", null);
The problem is that we can not find any information about the format of the "String epcMask" parameter. Can anyone give us a hint about the value we must pass to the Perform method as "epcMask" in order to do what we have explained?
Thank you in advance.
How to locate tags by barcode (EAN) instead of EPC |
4 Replies
Hi, have you figured out how to do this ?
I am stuck with the same issue.
Thank you in advance
Hi Martin,
Yes, the sent me the following email:
The definitions of three parameters defined in RFIDReader.Actions.TagLocationing.Perform(String tagID, String epm, AntennaInfo antennaInfo) are explained below.
tagID: EPC ID of the Tag to be located
epm: Hex mask string to be applied to the provided EPC ID
antennaInfo: specify the antenna on which the locationing operation is to be performed
Note:
For the provided example, the code snippet below would perform locationing on tags whose EPC IDs start with 8433594013132.
rfidReader.Actions.TagLocationing.Perform("843359401313200001723799",”FFFFFFFFFFFFF00000000000”,null);
I hope this info helps you too! Best regards,
Luciano
Hi Luciano,
Yes that is very helpfull, thank you very much !
On my side, I have found that to look for an ean, I first have to translate it to epc. I have been told that the how is on this website : https://www.gs1.org/.
Have you figured it out ?
Hi again,
Do you know if the mask principle can be used for multitag locationing as well ?
The use case is the following: the same article has more than one ean, so I need to locate every epc with the FFFFFFFFFFFFFF0000000000 mask.
Thank you in advance,
Regards,
Martin