ADC, Inc., Fresh Item, Recipe and Barcode Printer Scale Management for Grocery Chains

iScale is a solid-state rack-mountable server, one per store, to connect to and manage the barcode labeling printer scales in the store. Its plug-and-go design enables it to manage any combination of scales in the store, including any combination of serial and Ethernet scales from any of the vendors listed here.

The iScale runs ADC's InterScale Scale Server software to communicate with the scale, but the iScale is as thin-server as possible: it's the minimum hardware necessary to connect serial scales in the store into your Enterprise InterScale system. The iScale allows as much InterScale scales management functionality as possible to be run on a centralized server at your headquarters location.

A Four-Port model with four serial ports that can "talk" in any of the serial protocols and line-levels that the scales need under software control. Simply tell the iScale through its web-browser user interface that there's a Hobart SP1500 on port number one and it will automatically communicate in half-duplex RS485 signals through that port. It's that plug-and-go. Each serial port can support up to 32 RS485 serial scales.
An Eight-Port model with twice as many software configurable ports as the Four-Port. Can support up to 8 x 32 RS485 scales plus any number of Ethernet scales.
A Zero-Port model for stores with all-Ethernet and no serial scales.

Of course, if you have all Ethernet scales in the store with a fast and reliable intranet/WAN connection to HQ, all of the InterScale software, including the Scale Server module, can run on one HQ server, so that you don't need an iScale in the store. It's your choice. However, the iScale does provide a good level of resilience and the security that your scales management change batches are going to apply on time, even if the WAN connection is down at scale communication time. InterScale can support any mix of stores with serial scales (via an iScale) and Ethernet scales (via iScale or direct from Central).

The iScale has no moving parts for extreme reliability. Even though it has a Pentium class processor, it has no cooling fan. It runs its Linux operating system and InterScale application code off a compact flash card file system, as made popular by digital cameras, so there is no spinning disk to ultimately fail.

ADC has been tremendously successful with the iScale, having sold over 3,500 units since its introduction in February 2000. Free evaluation units are available.

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