Welcome to Socket Mobile Developer Documentation¶
This is the place where all the SDK documentation can be found.
Overview¶
As one of the leading manufacturers of barcode scanners and one of the earliest to support mobile devices, Socket Mobile is unique in providing an SDK that has extensive device support. CaptureSDK covers all the devices Socket Mobile produces, on all major platforms and frameworks with a unified integration. This means you only need one integration to allow your customers to choose and use any Socket Mobile data capture reader.
Device types¶
CaptureSDK supports three device types:
Bluetooth barcode scanners¶
Socket Mobile offers 1D/2D imagers and 1D only scanners (Laser and Linear imagers). These are Bluetooth Classic devices. Bluetooth Low Energy-based devices are coming soon.
NFC reader/writers¶
Our NFC reader/writer devices focus on major NFC cards, tags, and mobile passes, and are based on Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE).
Camera based barcode scanning solution¶
This special software-based barcode scanning solution uses the built-in camera on mobile phones and tablets to read barcodes. We treat it as a device for two reasons:
It’s always connected. The end-user can access it directly through the Socket Mobile Companion app and change its settings from there.
The SDK integration also treats it as a separate device, following a similar pattern for device management. The same code for handling a barcode scanner or NFC reader can be used to handle the camera-based solution with no changes or logical bifurcation.
Device and SDK common use cases¶
Here are some most common use cases for integrating with the CaptureSDK.
Streamline user workflow
Most Bluetooth barcode scanners on the market are used in HID (Basic) mode. In this mode, the app needs an active text field to collect the scanned data. A seemingly trivial requirement in practice has a significant user experience impact. When a user processes a lot of scans, the additional steps needed to tap on a text field to activate/highlight and then scan not only interrupts the workflow, but also can be error-prone. By controlling the device through the SDK, the scan can happen at any time, and the user does not have to interact with the app on the screen, resulting in a more streamlined process.
Flexible data processing
When data must be collected through a text field in the UI, the ways to process the data are limited and must be done after the data is posted into the text field. With CaptureSDK, the data can be read and processed behind the scenes before it’s consumed by other parts of the app. Take reading a driver’s license, for example; most apps do not need the whole data set. They typically only need a few sections such as age, ID number, state, expiration date, etc. This is difficult to achieve in HID (Basic) mode without using the SDK. But with the SDK, the data can easily be segmented and parsed, without being tied to any UI elements, and before being consumed by the app.
Tap-and-go with NFC reader
Tap-and-go has grown popular in recent years with the emergence of the NFC readers. Using CaptureSDK, the tap-and-go behavior can be incorporated right into your app, just like scanning a barcode. There’s no need to create a specific UI to receive the data,but it’s good practice to provide some visual cues for users to know where and when to tap. Tap-and-go readers can be applied to many situations, such as checking in and out, cashless payments, and more.