USB scanner issues with Kinetic

Kinetic ERP
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We use Honeywell USB barcode scanners on our production floor. We are seeing issues when scanning into Kinetic screens where some of the characters are “shifted”, meaning upper case become lower case, 1 becomes !, 2 becomes @, 3 becomes #, etc. For example, if I scan a barcode that should read 1000124-FLAT it is reading into the Kinetic text box as 1000!@4-flat. I can scan the same barcode into a Classic screen, notepad, Excel, etc. and it reads correctly. I do have a support ticket in for this but currently going in circles so I am reaching out to see if anyone else is seeing this when scanning into Kinetic screens.

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We also have been experiencing this issue, all of our barcode scanners started to have the exact same issue your did. We noticed that this only started happening after we went from Kinetic 2023.1 to Kinetic 2025.1.5. Did you end up having any results from the support ticket you created?

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Here’s some AI @CzarnezkiS :

:pushpin: Likely Cause: Keyboard Emulation & Regional Settings

Honeywell scanners often operate in keyboard wedge mode, meaning they emulate keystrokes as if someone typed the barcode manually. If the scanner is sending 1000124-FLAT, but the ERP system (Kinetic) receives 1000!@4-flat, it suggests that:

  • The keyboard layout or input language on the client machine (or browser session) is mismatched.
  • For example, if the scanner is sending 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 4, -, F, L, A, T, but the system interprets 2 as @ and 4 as !, it’s likely using a non-US keyboard layout (e.g., French AZERTY or another regional setting).

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: What to Check

  1. Client Device Keyboard Layout:
  • Go to the OS settings (Windows/Mac) and confirm the keyboard layout is set to US QWERTY.
  • Check if the browser or web app is overriding input settings.
  1. Scanner Configuration:
  • Use Honeywell’s configuration tool or scan setup barcodes to ensure the scanner is set to US keyboard emulation.
  • Some scanners allow switching between HID (keyboard) and serial modes — confirm it’s in the correct mode.
  1. Browser Behavior:
  • Try scanning into a plain text field (like Notepad or a browser address bar) to see if the issue persists outside of Kinetic.
  • If it works fine elsewhere, the issue may be with how Kinetic handles input or JavaScript events.
  1. ERP Update Impact:
  • The latest Kinetic update might have changed how input fields handle keypress events or character encoding.
  • Check release notes or contact support to see if input handling was modified.
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This is the same timeframe it started happening for us as well, June I think? Support has not been able to recreate the issue on their systems. They remoted into ours but could not reproduce it there either. I think you have to have a direct USB connection to reproduce the error. This is all on the Smart client, we have tested on the web client and it is working as expected. So that will be our path to resolution, we will switch our users to the web client after the 2025.2 update in November. Not ideal for our users who see this every day on the Smart client, but we haven’t been able to come up with a temporary work around.

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Thanks Utah, this gives me some things to look into. Much appreciated!

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Personally I have had to mess with data wedge settings on our zebras and honeywells for other web apps so this could be the answer here. Do you have a contact that you use to buy/troubleshoot your honeywells? Maybe they could take a look too.