I recently purchased a Sunmi Blink 2D barcode scanner, for more stylish booking code registration with Muckturnier.org ;-)
Indeed, this thingy looks way cooler than a “normal” handheld barcode scanner. I think it’s intended to be used in retail as a POS termial for QR code based payments (like Alipay). However, here in Germany (or Europe?!) this way to pay isn’t too common (we use NFC for that). Thus, the choice for such scanners is not too manifold. However, for a muckturnier, this thing should be the very right device for QR booking code scanning.
The scanner has a configuration manual with special barcodes to e.g. set the keyboard layout, which codes to search for and so on – just like a “normal” barcode scanner (after all, it is one). However, whilst testing it out, I noticed one problem: The scanner did not type encoded spaces. All space characters were simply skipped and omitted.
E.g. the following QR code contains QR Code with a bunch of spaces:
Yet, the Sunmi Blink would type QRCodewithabunchofspaces when scanning it. I also tried Data Matrix, Aztec and PDF 417 – always with the same result: Spaces encoded in the barcode would be ignored when scanning them.
So I decided to file a request at Sunmi’s customer support asking what’s going on here – and I actually got an answer. After writing a few emails and describing the problem, sending some example barcodes and so on the employee finally asked me to try out the following configuration code:
… and it actually did the trick! After having scanned it, the Sunmi Blink typed spaces encoded in a barcode as-is.
This code is actually not printed in the configuration manual. So you have no chance to find it. The Chinese ideographs below are translated to “Output Function Keys” by Google Translator. I would suppose that there’s also a reverse code to turn the spaces typing off again that should read 3030AD1 (like e.g. the two barcodes turning Aztec Code support on and off, which encode 1003281 and 1003280 respectively).
Anyway this seems to be some non-standard barcode format. I can read it using my phone’s barcode scanner Binary Eye and it does decode to 3030AD0, identified as a Code 128 barcode. But when I create a Code 128 barcode containing 3030AD0, the result looks different. Most probably, there’s some special sequence that ensures that the scanner’s configuration is not changed if a real/normal Code 128 barcode containing some configuration sequence is scanned. I thus could not test if one can switch this off again other than resetting the scanner to factory defaults.
However, I hope this helps somebody at some point, as my searches for “Sunmi Blink doesn’t enter spaces” or such didn’t yield any result, and this code seems to be not (yet?) documented officially, at least not for the Sunmi Blink. But after all, my Sunmi Blink now types spaces :-)
Akademy is the annual world summit of KDE, one of the largest Free Software communities in the world. And I'm a proud member of it :-) Also, I could finally meet Johannes Zarl-Zierl, the maintainer of KPhotoAlbum in-person. You can read more in KPhotoAlbum's news.
This was really a nice experience. I hope I can go again soon!
Exactly today 10 years ago, I officially became a KDE Developer, after receiving the following mail:
Hi Tobias,
Your account has now been converted to a developer account.
The username for SVN is "tleupold". Please find instructions attached.
Thanks,
Ben Cooksley
KDE Sysadmin
Ben Cooksley is still KDE's Sysadmin btw :-)
I started working on KPhotoAlbum some time back in April 2014. I had no clue about C++, but I thought one should be able to tag areas on photos. I had no clue about how to add this either, but I decided to at least do anything about this. So I cloned the KPA code from GitHub (which actually only was a mirror of the official repo, but I didn't kew this either) and messed with the code. It was my first attempt to work with a compiled language at all.
After a lot of trial and error, I managed to add a checkbox saying "tags for this category can be positioned" or such, and I also managed to make the setting persistent, by looking how this was done with other options.
Being quite happy with that, I filed a merge request, only stating that I managed to add an option, and maybe someone would think this was a nice idea. Well, and this became an actual milestone in my "Open Source Carreer": Johannes Zarl-Zierl, then one of KPA's devs, now the project maintainer, took me under his wings and effectively teached my how to code C++, as an outstanding coach with angelic patience.
Without Johannes' unremitting support back then, I most probably would still be stuck messing with some scripted languages, and I would most probably never have tried to write GUI programs at all. This really changed a lot for me, and for what I do in my free time ;-) I would possibly never have started "real" programming. So I want to say this again: Thanks a lot and kudos to Johannes Zarl-Zierl!
May the next 10 years be as nice and as productive as the last ones.
Heute ist die Schlussrechnung für unsere PV-Anlage gekommen. Ganz billig war sie nicht. Wir haben mit der Firma Rietec einen rennomierten lokalen Betrieb mit der Installation beauftragt, und es wurde zweifelsohne auch gute Arbeit geleistet. Wir haben auch hochwertige Komponenten verbauen lassen: 425-W-Kollektoren von IBC Solar, einen 10-kW-Wechselrichter von Fronius (die Größenordnung hätten wir nicht gebraucht, aber der passende kleinere hätte eine unbestimmte Lieferzeit gehabt …) und einen 5-kWh-Batteriespeicher von BYD. Dummerweise war auch das Gerüst (wie auch schon beim Hausbau von der Firma Wimmer Gerüstbau, ehemals Steinhäußer, gestellt) recht aufwändig. Und das alles gibt es nicht umsonst.
Unterm Strich ist die Anlage jetzt jedenfalls mit ziemlich genau 21 000 € zu Buche geschlagen. Das ist schon eine Hausnummer. Wenn man mal eine kleine Abschätzung zur Wirtschaftlichkeit machen will:
Wir haben in den letzten Jahren einen jährlichen Stromverbrauch von ungefähr 3 700 kWh gehabt. Geht man beim Stromverbrauch unseres Opel Corsa F e von übers Jahr gemittelten 16,5 kWh pro 100 km und einer Fahrleistung von 10 000 km pro Jahr aus, kommen nochmal gut 1 600 kWh oben drauf. Sind wir also bei ca. 5 300 kWh Stromverbrauch pro Jahr.
Bei dem Strompreis, den wir momentan in unserm Vertrag mit E.ON zahlen (33,68 ¢/kWh) müssten wir also knapp zwölf Jahre lang komplett den Stromverbrauch von Haus und Auto allein mit Eigenproduktion decken, damit sich die Anlage amortisiert. Die lächerlichen 8,2 ¢ pro kWh für’s Einspeisen lassen wir in dieser Rechnung mal außen vor. Selbstverständlich wird das aber leider sogar deutlich länger als zwölf Jahre dauern. In unserem ersten Winter waren wir – erwartungsgemäß – meilenweit von Autarkie entfernt. Weiterhin muss man davon ausgehen, dass der Wechselrichter und der Batteriespeicher irgendwann ausfallen oder zumindest repariert werden müssen. Die Kosten dafür sind noch gar nicht berücksichtigt.
Bei diesen Zeiträumen frage ich mich schon fast, ob ich den Break-Even-Point überhaupt noch erleben werde …
Quintessenz: Es gehört schon ein ordentliches Maß an Idealismus dazu, bei der Nummer mitzumachen. Aber zumindest leisten wir unseren Beitrag.
