> No. The information being captured needs to be keyed. > Apparently the items that *I* want to put a barcode on are shipped all > around the country, and get seriously abused along the way. > Are there industrial barcodes that can be welded onto things? YES. A lot of American railroads used barcodes to track their fleet of freight cars around the country and used trackside barcode scanners for the purpose. The system was put in in the 60's and 70's but didn't last terribly long because of the abuse the bar codes got. What they, and many other industries, now use are transponders (also known as tags or RFID for Radio Frequency ID). These are usually passive devices. When placed in a field of radio waves they use the captured radio energy to transmit an ID code back to a receiver nearby. Active devices need a power supply but have better range etc. These RFID tags are built in a huge range of sizes for use in personnel access control (a "swipeless swipe card"), electronic toll collection in cars, to identifying all sorts of things. A Logging company down Rotorua way uses them to track logging trucks around the place so their logs don't go missing (it happens!). Some railroads use them to track railway wagons (industrial strength enough for you?). Buses in Auckland use them to identify themselves to the traffic signal control system so they can get priority at particular sets of signals. In the last case they are capable of transmitting up to 64k of information over up to 1m at speeds of up to 120km/hr. Depending on your application this technology may be just what you are looking for. Check out http://www.ti.com/mc/docs/tiris/docs/index.htm for Texas Instrument's product. There are a lot more out there too. Wes Edwards --------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Offtopic List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
