Hand-held dual technology identification tag reading head

Abstract

A hand-held dual reading head including a hand-held housing having a light transmissive window at one end thereof; and containing an actuatable bar-code reader, which produces a light beam which exits the housing via the window and detects light from the beam reflected from a bar code tag to generate a first electrical signal corresponding to bar code data read from the tag. The housing also contains an actuatable radio frequency tag reader which includes a transmit/receive coil mounted adjacent the one end of the housing containing the window, for producing a radio frequency signal of a first frequency to energize a radio frequency transponder-type identification tag and for receiving an identifying signal of a second frequency transmitted by an energized radio frequency identification tag to provide a second electrical output signal corresponding to the tag identifying signal, preferably in the same signal format as the bar-code data. The reading head has a common signal output connected to receive the first and second electrical signals, and a manually actuatable switch arrangement mounted on the housing for selectively actuating one of the bar-code tag reader and the radio frequency tag reader depending on the type tag to be read. Preferably, the housing is gun-shaped and the switch arrangement is a trigger-like normally OFF switch with two ON positions, one for each of the readers.