Troubleshoot Bluetooth Scanner

If your scanner does not scan barcode, or enter the wrong barcode number, or the number stays on the Scoutly screen, please follow the instructions below.

After you connect the scanner to the phone in HID mode, the scanner will act just like a keyboard to the phone. Our app is not aware of your scanner, it takes input from whichever keyboard happens to be connected. When your scanner scans a barcode, it will send the barcode to the currently active program on the phone just as you are typing a number with the phone’s keyboard. You can also scan a barcode into the Email or Notepad app on your phone.

Please follow the steps below to troubleshoot your scanner.

1. To verify your scanner is paired to your phone successfully, open the Email app on your phone and see if you can scan the barcode into a blank email. If you can scan the barcodes to your Email app, then your scanner is paired successfully and you should be able to scan the barcode to the Scoutly app as well. Here is a video to show you how to do this.

2. If you can scan the barcode into your Email app, but not all the time, make sure you are not using 3rd party keyboard app such as Swiftkey. You need to disable any 3rd party keyboard apps and only use the default keyboard app. Please see this topic for more information.

3. After you scan the barcode into your Email app, verify the barcode matches the barcode of your item. For books, it must be EAN-13 barcode which starts with “978”. For other items, it must be a UPC-A 12 digit number. You cannot scan UPC barcodes from a book. Please see this topic to learn how to scan a book correctly.

4. The scanner should append the Enter (CR) key after each barcode. You should see each barcode occupy a line in your Email app. If you see the next barcode is next to the previous barcode in the same line, not below, then the scanner does not append the Enter (CR) key. Check the scanner user manual, there should be a command barcode to enable the Enter key. Before you scan that command barcode, turn off Bluetooth on your phone, so the scanner can be disconnected. Then you scan the command barcode to configure the scanner. After this, you can turn on the phone’s Bluetooth to pair again and test.

5. If the barcode does not scan correctly into your Email app, then the barcode scanner is faulty. You can try to factory reset the scanner to see if it fixes the problem. Please check this topic.

6. After you’ve tried all the steps above and your scanner still cannot scan the correct barcode into your Email app, then the scanner is defective. You need to check the warranty on this scanner with the manufacturer or try using another scanner.