About Opticon

Opticon is a worldwide family of companies consisting of OPTOELECTRONICS Co., Ltd, Opticon Sensors Europe BV and Opticon, Inc.

Opticon was one of the first companies in the world to specialize in the manufacture of barcode scanners. Since that time, this pioneering organization has evolved into a multi-faceted, international supplier of high-quality, automatic identification and data collection equipment to thousands of customers in diverse markets worldwide.

Located in the Netherlands, Opticon Sensors Europe BV is the Europen headquarters serving markets in Europe, South America, Africa, Australia and Asia. Branch organizations are located in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden, Taiwan and Australia along with trading agents in Brazil and China.

Opticon continues to deliver new solutions combined with the latest technologies and continues to focus on delivering high-quality products.

What is the difference between  Laser, Linear imager and 2D Scanners and 1D and 2D Barcodes?

All barcode readers will read the types of barcode on products, library books, magazines and those generated in house. These are 1D barcodes and generallly alpha numeric or numbers only. Laser Scanners and Linear Imagers both require the line of the reader to be horizontally through the barcode for it to be read (as in the image top left). Multi Line laser Readers, often used in supermarkets, will read the barcode persented in any orientation (second image).

2D imagers will read a barcode no matter what angle the barcode is presented. Additioanly they will read 2D barcodes which contain much more information such as a product description or address details as in the bacodes (top right).