JPH0335704B2 - - Google Patents

Description

[Detailed description of the invention]

The present invention relates to a device for reading coded data. It is particularly suitable for reading printed data consisting of a black and white pattern (hereinafter referred to as a barcode) with an optical reader (hereinafter referred to as a barcode reader). As shown in FIG. 1, a barcode represents various characters and symbols by the width of a black and white pattern. Various types of barcodes have been standardized, such as
NW-7HEX (Narrow Wide-7
Hexadecimal) method, as shown in Table 1,
Each character consists of 7 elements, 4 bars B1-B4 and 3 spaces (S1-S3) between the bars.
It has 10 numerical characters (0-9), 6 English characters (A-F), and start/stop characters (a-d) as control characters.

[Table] The data configured in this way is divided into a plurality of lines and recorded as shown in FIG. In FIG. 2, up to three lines are illustrated, and the following are omitted. The data is read by scanning this barcode with a scanning barcode reader. When reading a large amount of data across several lines, it is possible to accidentally read one line over the other. Conversely, you may end up repeatedly reading a line that you have already read. Conventionally, in order to prevent these errors, as shown in Figure 2, a start character 1a indicating the beginning of each line is followed by several characters 1b indicating line numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. The data 1c is arranged to start from the next one. Next to the actual data 1c is a stop character 1 representing the end of each line.
can be entered. The stop character 1 often uses the same character as the start character 1a, for example, a. In addition, start character 1 in Figure 2
a, several characters 1b indicating the next line number, and stop character 1 are respectively character a, character 1 (=1 line,
Although the following lines are indicated by 2, 3, . . . ) and the letter a in order from the second line onwards, they are actually recorded as barcodes as shown in FIG. In conventional barcodes, several characters 1b representing line numbers are included in a series of barcodes, as shown in FIG. 2, so there is an inconvenience that the barcode must be increased by one or more characters. Therefore, the number of reading errors increases as the number of barcodes increases. Additionally, there is less room for entering actual data. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a device that can read the order of data lines without error, without adding characters representing line numbers as in the prior art. Specifically, by combining the four characters a to d that are used as start/stop characters in the NW-7HEX method,
The data blocks are read in the correct order. A data reading device to which the present invention is applied to achieve the above object is a data reading device that reads a plurality of rows of a data block consisting of a group of coded data according to the arrangement order of the data block. Among the signals detected by the scanning detection means of a data block in which a start control character identical to the stop control character at the end of the previous row is placed at the beginning of each row, the signal of the start control character at the beginning of each row is The present invention is characterized by comprising means for determining whether or not the signal matches the signal of the stop control character read immediately before, and an alarm means for issuing a warning in response to a non-coincidence signal from the determining means. Embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to FIGS. 3 to 7. FIG. 3 shows an example of data arranged by barcodes used in the reading device of the present invention. In the first line, a is used as the start character 1a.
Place. For convenience, a is shown as a letter, but it is actually recorded as a bar code. Next 1b
is a barcode representing actual data, and is for one character. Further, there is actual data 1c, and then a stop character 1 indicating the end of each line is entered. In the first line, b is placed as the stop character 1. In the second line, start character 1a is set to b, and stop character 1 is set to b.
Let be c. Hereinafter, in the third line, the start character 1a is c, the stop character 1 is d, and the fourth
In the row, the start character 1a is set to d, the stop character 1 is set to a, and in the fifth row, the start character 1a is set to a, the stop character 1 is set to b, and so on. That is, the stop character of the current line and the start character of the next line are the same character, and the control characters a, b, c, and d are used repeatedly. The last line indicates the end of the data with a code of 0D0. At the beginning of each line, line numbers 1d are given in the order of Φ1, Φ2, Φ3, . . . so that the operator can read them. FIG. 4 is a block diagram of an apparatus for reading bar codes arranged as described above. Reference numeral 11 denotes a barcode reader which allows an operator to manually scan a barcode. The output of the barcode reader 11 is input to the controller 12, where signal detection and error detection are performed. A display 13 displays the number of lines read or errors. 14
is a buzzer that emits different sounds when it is read correctly and when it is read incorrectly. The controller 12 operates according to the flowchart shown in FIG. Set to the initial state in steps S1 and S2. The read flag becomes "1" when the start character is read and "0" when the stop character is read. In step S2, the first character, in this case a, is entered into the control register. When the barcode reader 11 is scanned, the first character 1a of the barcode is read in step S3. 1
Since a is a control character, step
If S4 is yes, go to step S5. In step S5, the read flag is checked. Here, since the initial state is set to "1", the result is yes and the process goes to step S6. In step S6, the first character 1a read in step S2 contains an a, so the character 1a is also an a.
Therefore, it matches, so yes. If you scan the second line by mistake, the first character 2a on the second line is b, so it will not match and you will go to NO, and at S11, an error will be displayed on the display 13, and an error sound will be sounded on the buzzer 14.
Make a sound. If the answer is yes in step S6, "1" is set in the read flag in step S7, indicating that the start character has been read. In step S8, the next character b of control register a is input. and step
Return to S3. Next, when the barcode reader 11 is scanned, in step S4 to read character 1b, NO is returned because it is not a control character, and in step S9, the read flag is ``1'', so the process goes to step 10 and reads the read data 1b into the text area. S10
Enter it with Steps S3-S4-S9-S10 are read repeatedly until the first line is finished. Step S3 the character at the end of the first line, the stop character.
Read at. Since the stop character is b, the answer at step S4 is yes. Check the read flag in step S5. Since the read flag is "1", the result is NO, and in step S12, a check is made to see if it matches the character in the control register. Since b was entered in the control register in step S8, it matches, and the result is yes, and the process goes to step S13. In step S13, "0" is set in the read flag to indicate that one row of data has been read. step
In S14, "φ1" is displayed on the display 13 to indicate that one line has been read correctly, indicating that it has been read normally. At the same time, a buzzer 14 generates a sound when it is read normally. At step S15, the end line is checked, and since the answer is NO, the process returns to step S3. In step S12, if the next second line 2 is read by scanning the barcode reader 11 incorrectly, the stop character of the second line 2 will not match because it is c.
If NO, an error is displayed in step S11. Next, in step S3, data for the next second row is read in the same manner as described above. If the third line is read by mistake, since the control register contains b in step S6 and the start character of the third line is c, the result will be NO, and an error will be displayed in step S11. As described above, data lines are read one after another, and finally the end line "0D0" is read, a determination is made in step S15, and all data reading is completed in step S16, and the end is displayed on the display 13. At the beginning of each data line, a line number 1d is given in the order of Φ1, Φ2, Φ3, etc. so that the operator can read it, so if it matches the display on the display 13, it can be read correctly. You can always check whether the information is correct or not. Start and stop characters are a, b, c,
Regarding the four lines in d, if there are no errors in four lines even if these are used repeatedly, line errors can be detected and there will be no errors in more than four lines. As described above in detail, according to the data reading device of the present invention, it is possible to easily detect when reading a data block spanning a plurality of rows that the rows are read out of order.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a barcode, FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a conventional barcode arrangement, FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a barcode arrangement used in the reading device of the present invention, and FIG. 5 is a control block diagram of the barcode reader of the present invention, and FIG. 5 is a control flowchart of the barcode reader. 11... Barcode reader, 12... Controller, 13... Display, 14... Buzzer.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. In a data reading device that reads a plurality of rows of a data block consisting of a group of coded data according to the arrangement order of the data block, a stop at the end of the previous row is placed at the beginning of each row. Among the signals detected by the scanning detection means in a data block in which a start control character identical to the control character is arranged, the signal of the stop control character whose signal of the start control character at the beginning of each row was read immediately before. What is claimed is: 1. A data reading device comprising: means for determining whether or not the data match, and an alarm means for issuing a warning in response to a non-coincidence signal from the determining means. 2. The data reading device according to claim 1, wherein the alarm means is a display device. 3. The data reading device according to claim 1, wherein the warning means is an audio warning device. 4. The data reading device according to claim 1, wherein the warning means is a display device and an audio warning device.