Bluetooth MFi is Apple’s licensing program for hardware and software specific to their iDevices. MFi, or Made for iOS (iPod/iPhone/iPad), in hardware like the Scanfob® 3002i denotes a special Bluetooth connection mode called IAP. IAP is similar to SPP on Android — which allows a peripheral device to connect as a virtual COM port. This capability allows software developers to interface peripherals directly with their apps. Simulating a virtual COM port means that scans are sent faster and more reliably. Simulated COM ports have the additional benefit of being able to send special characters or information that you would

Bluetooth Pairing Modes Bluetooth LE (BLE), SPP, HID are all Bluetooth profiles (sometimes called “pairing modes”). Why use Bluetooth BLE? On iOS there is MFi mode which is SPP with Apple restrictions, so only approved devices can connect to iOS devices. The main usability difference between the Bluetooth BLE & HID/SPP/MFi, is the pairing process. With Bluetooth HID you must pair with the wireless device via host operating system Bluetooth settings app. With BLE, you can directly and immediately connect from the desired app – and MUCH faster. You can use

Control characters are characters that do not representable a printable character but instead serves to initiate a specific action. There are various types of control characters, including printing control characters, data structuring control characters, and transmission control characters—many of which are often used in the prefix or suffix configurations of barcode and RFID scanners. Some applications, such as SerialMagic Gears allow you to append a control character to scan data at the software level.  The table below provides information regarding some of the more common ASCII control characters. Control Character Name Explanation SOH

UHF (Ultra High Frequency) is the Internation Telecommunications Union‘s designation for radio frequency identification in the range between 300 MHz and 3 GHz. The UHF frequency range is further allocated for various purposes that vary by geographical location (see the Wikipedia page for UHF for more information on UHF frequency allocations). UHF is used for television broadcasting, cell phones, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and RFID business applications that require longer read ranges than lower frequency bands can provide (think livestock tracking and race timing).  To learn more about UHF, click here.