Handy legacy scanning/data collection handheld
(by Conrad H. Blickenstorfer)

The Opticon H-32 was introduced in October 2014 as a small, light barcode scanner and handheld terminal for applications such as retail, warehouse, inventory management and similar. It's an ultra-compact ruggedized keypad handheld with an integrated industrial-grade 1D barcode scanner or 2D imager, using Microsoft's Embedded Compact 7 OS.

The H-32 measures 2.5 x 5.6 inches, a footprint reminiscent of the way cellphones used to be. The device is a bit over an inch thick and weighs 6.9 ounces, again reminding of consumer phones of an era gone by. The display, likewise, is of the legacy kind, measuring 2.8 inches diagonally and offering 240 x 320 pixel QVGA resolution.

The H-32 is designed to be operated via its integrated physical keypad or via a supplied resistive stylus. The keypad is very logically arranged with a numeric pad at the bottom, a directional diamond above, a scanner key in its center, and six function keys flanking it (shift, function, alpha, backspace, enter, and esc).

The hardware is based on the Texas Instruments Sitara AM3354 processor with an 800MHz ARM Cortex-A8 core, an integrated NEON SIMD co-processor, and a Power VR SGX530 graphics processor. There's 256MB of DDR2 mobile RAM and 256MB of Flash, and storage is expandable by up to 32GB via a user-accessible microSDHC card slot. The H-32 is one of relatively few new handhelds using Microsoft's Windows Embedded Compact 7 (also known as Windows CE 7).

Since one of the H27's major intended tasks is data capture device, it's available with either an integrated 1D diode laser scanner or 1D/2D imager with green aiming LED. As a basic legacy data collection device, the H-32 doesn't have NFC, GPS or a camera.

For wireless communication, there's dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. On the wired side there's USB OTG (On The Go). Wired LAN is available via a USB-to-Ethernet adapter cable.

The Opticon H-32 can survive five feet drops onto concrete, and it's sealed to IP54 specifications where the "5" means it's protected against dust, and the "4" that it can handle water spray from all directions (albeit with limited ingress permitted, which we never like to see).

Judging by its specs and design, the Opticon H-32 seems designed as a direct replacement for aging or broken legacy Windows CE handhelds, or for all those numerous tasks where the latest in consumer smartphone tech simply isn't needed.

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Opticon is a worldwide supplier of automatic identification and data collection equipment. The company, which is based in the Netherlands and has been around for over a quarter of a century, was an early manufacturer of barcode scanners and from there branched out into a large variety of data collection modules and devices, as well as ruggedized handhelds such as the H-32 described on this page. Opticon has a sales office in Renton, WA.