Windows CE Programming

I provide actually two applications as Scan2Load. But how does this work?

SmartSystems Scan2Config

Scan2Load is a technology used by SmartSystems as part of Scan2Configure. Scan2Configure is part of the AutoDeploy license addon you can buy as addition to SmartSystems. Beside the fact, that you deploy applications and settings via a special DHCP option, you can also use Scan2Configure to not only deploy connection and other settings but applications to.

To invoke Scan2Configure, right click a smartsystems backup of a device. Then select Scan2Config in the popup menu and you will get the Scan2Configure dialog. In the lower part of the dialog you can enter a download location for an application setup file. This should normally be a cab file on a ftp or http server.

File download

As soon as you enter a location, you can uncheck ‘Apply Connection Settings’ and then Scan2Configure will only create barcodes for the file download. The created barcodes will then have no configuration settings.

After entering the download location of the application install file, you can use Scan2Configure to create barcodes for this. You have the option to create either code 128 or PDF417 barcodes. You will then get a print dialog and a page with two or more barcodes. I always use PDF417 and normally get only two barcodes for a download.

The device side: Scan2Load / S2C

If you now scan these barcodes starting with barcode 1 the following happens: first the device side tool S2C is loaded. This tool is able to read and interpret the other encrypted barcodes. Secondly you have to scan the remaining barcodes until all barcodes are read. S2C will guide you thru this. For a simple download, you only have to scan the S2C launcher barcode and one containing the download location.

When the last barcode is scanned, the download instruction and the file location is saved to \Scan2Load and in the registry HKLM\Software\Intermec\SSClient…Then device will restart and after the reboot it will show a yellow banner saying “Provisioning. Please wait”. This indicates that the device attempts to download the file you specified. If the download has finished, the device will install it (hopefully you specified a CAB to download) and then reboots again.

Troubleshooting

If something is wrong, you can take a look at \SSConfig.txt. This file does a bit logging for the Scan2Load process. You will see that the tool first waits for a valid IP address. The whole process will only work with WLAN or ENET Internet connected devices. SSClient does not use or fire Connection Manager and so WWAN connections dont work, as they will not be established automatically by the requests used by SSClient.

The story

If everything was setup correctly you only had to scan two barcodes and got a new application installed automatically.