Touchstar Boston 8500 Handheld Scanner Disconnecting

[julius_kisieli1]

Hi all,

We have quite 40 Touchstar Boston 8500 (http://www.touchstar.co.uk/product_mo...) Hand Held Barcode scanners that connect via ZoneFlex 7352 controlled by a Smart Standby Zondirector 1100 to our network.

We have just started testing and what we have found is that the hand held units seem to "disconnect" from the network at random intervals (5-60 minutes) all sleep and power setting are either off or on max. The hand held still has an IP address but the device can no longer access the LAN or can be pinged from any machine within our network. To reconnect we need to put the device in standby mode and then switch it back on, this effectively restarts the network card.

The WLAN card that the handheld has is a Summit, I have found a setting that I thing may be responsible for the drop off's as it may interfere with what the ZoneDirector is trying to do: http://www.summitdata.com/Documents/G...

Agressive Scan is a feature in Summit WLAN cards that actively looks for better Ap's and try's to connect to them, from my understanding the ZoneDirector will transfer the device between Ap's? Would this be culprit?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,
Julius

[julius_kisieli1]

Ha ha! Yes, very true! Bring on Android!

[eizens_putnins]

I can confirm that I have seen same problem with Summit card on Psion handhelds with same versions of firmware.  Psion handhelds have been tested and confirmed unusable using 3 different (Ruckus, Cisco and Aruba) WLAN setups.

Roaming was not working properly at all, and finally, after Psion rep spending 3 days trying to fix them, all 100 devices have been replaced by Motorola 9000, which resolved problem 100%. So be informed and avoid Summit WLAN card.

[julius_kisieli1]

Hi Eizens,

Glad you got your issue resolved, can you share the actual model number of your Motorola 9000 range, we are looking at replacing our handhelds, the issue has never been 100% resolved and the performance has always been flaky at best even after we made all the changes to Ruckus.

Thanks,
Julius

[eizens_putnins]

We have  good experience with mutiple Motorola models (9000 and later) and Casio DTX-7, DTX-8 handhelds. Casio devices have smaller screens,  are a bit cheaper, more compact and much more lightweight.  Both work without problems and are reliable.
By the way, Psion brand is also owned by Motorola, but it is different device (similar in style so). It has nothing bad actually, except absolutely offull WLAN adapter (or more probably, the adapter driver is flowed). But as there is no way to fix this driver, this Psion Workabout Pro devices are useless as Wi-Fi scanners.
At least it was so during 2013 year, when we had to make different tests with them and troubleshoot customer systems.
May be newer devices have different Wi-Fi adapters and are free of this bug, but it was so scary experience, that I would not recommend use of any of them having any choice, and would not change my opinion without extensive (and trusted) testing proving that the problem is really fixed.