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Technical Q & A
Groqit's specifications
The Groqit device measures 27x30x152 mm, with a 31x10mm screen. It uses one AAA battery. With battery
and lanyard, it weights 65 gm.
Groqit's built-in barcode-reader is a contact-reader (wand) type.
Memory capacity is 128MB, the file system is FAT16 with custom security (for the ID only).
It uses a proprietary OS and the software is in One Time Programmable (OTP)
memory.
Memory capacity is 128MB, raw barcode storing capacity is about 3.5 million. File
capacity (with translations) is about a quarter of a million, because
it takes up to 400 bytes per item to store complete records including
its barcode, title, author, and other important information.
Definitions
Inventory - any of the files you store in your Groqit
can be referred to as "Inventory" in the sense that the Groqit is helping
you to keep track of or manage your Personal Inventory. So your Wishlist
is included in its Category on our Groqit, and can be regarded
as functioning the same as any other "Inventory" you have taken. You
might keep an inventory of items you have loaned to a friend, or of movies
you have already seen and don't want to see again. Individual Inventory
Lists are also referred to as Categories.
Category: The Groqit has separate places to keep track
of different kinds of things; BOOKS is one of the Categories on
your Groqit's Main Menu. You can add categories to your Groqit. (LINK
to Manual page)
Main Menu: The top level Menu appears when you first
turn your Groqit on. The Display shows you only two of the
Main Menu items at a time.
Sub-Menu : Each Main Menu item has a Sub-Menu which you
can Navigate to using the buttons. All the Categories have the same
Sub-Menu, which allows you to Check what's on your lists, add to them, and
delete items.
Groqit Buddy : Someone you have authorized to share your
Registry files with, and who has authorized you to see and download their
Registry files in return.
Registry: Where you put the files you want your
Groqit Buddies to see and to download to their Groqits. You might
want them to see your Wishlist(s) only, or you might want to let them see
what you have, so someone who wants to get you a gift can see that their
surprise present isn't already something you own.
GDA or Groqit Desktop Application: This
small application makes it possible for your Groqit device and
the Groqit web site, and all of its services, to interact. You download
it from the Groqit website,
for your Windows PC or for your MAC, and it installs
itself. More on the GDA here.
WEB SYNC: This is a function that
the GDA uses in uploading from your Groqit, downloading new information
back to your Groqit in an organizewd way, and making sure that
the data you have had automatically translated online plus whatever
additions and edits you have made by hand (manual entry on your
keyboard) are meshed properly. (Your
manual entries take precedence, if there is ever a conflict). ( Link
to more info.)
How are the files structured on a Groqit?
Category - these are directories or folders in the file system. Your Groqit's
main menu displays categories.
File - each Category has at least a barcode file. If you are using translations,
there will be other files: author, title, isbn, etc. These are standard
DOS ASCII files.
Record - each File consists of records. Records
are one line long end in the DOS standard CR-LF (carriage
return - linefeed) and are in alpha-numeric order.
Fields - each Record consists of one
or more fields. Fields each
store a specific type of information. Fields are separated
by the character "|". The first field (the sort field)
is also the name of the file.
for example:
Category - MUSIC
Files - BARCODE, COMPOSER, TITLE, VERSION
Records -
PEGGY LEE|WHITE CHRISTMAS [ORIGINAL SOUNDT|LEE, PEGGY [1]|08122709404
PEGGY LEE|YOU CAN DEPEND ON ME|LEE, PEGGY [1]|08122757692
RAHSAAN ROLAND KIRK|MEETING OF THE T|KIRK, RAHSAAN ROLAND|04228241551
ROBERT GOULET|16 MOST REQUESTED SONGS|GOULET, ROBERT|04228142972
ROBERT GOULET|BEST OF ROBERT GOULET [CURB]|GOULET, ROBERT|04228142974
ROBERT GOULET|I WISH YOU LOVE|GOULET, ROBERT|04228227802
Fields - Composer | Title | Performer | UPC barcode
What kind of information do barcodes convey?
The UPC barcodes you see on nearly all merchandise you encounter
(in the US) are called "Universal Price Codes" because the people
decided to design a more standardized system than the pre-UPC free-for-all. They
organized it by coding the COUNTRY into the first part of the UPC
code, and then the COMPANY that the set of barcodes was assigned
to. After that, the numbers at the end were assigned by the
companies to identify their own merchandise in whatever way each
company sees fit. The final digit is a checksum for
validation.
The European Article Number (EAN) has a similar structure, except
the country code is the first three characters .
How can a barcode tell a book from a CD, when it can't tell
a CD from a can of soup?
Books are special.
Years ago, a variant of Price Point UPC was created
just for paperback books. It is longer than a normal UPC; any time a 17
digit UPC barcode shows up, we know it is a paperback book. We
have tables that convert this to the (book-specific) ISBN, which
we can than use to make translations. (You may only see
16 human-readable digits, but there are 17 in the barcode.)
With the more recent EAN (European Article
Number) standard, an imaginary country called "Bookland" was
created (978 or 979) , which all books come from. The remaining
digits are the International Standard Book Number (ISBN). Most
newer books have an EAN as well as a UPC. Since books have their
own "country
code" in the EAN system, you can always identify a book barcode
by its primary EAN digits, but nothing else works the same
way. An
EAN that starts with 979 is both the EAN and the ISBN.
A company like Warner Brothers or Sony can use their huge batches
of barcode numbers however they want, so you can't even guess if
you're looking at a movie or a game or a music recording, unless
you have the actual full translation data.
There are other kinds of barcodes that are closed to any kind of
interpretation outside the "Closed loop" they were created to serve. Large
retailers have their own internal systems, and simply create their
own barcodes, print them out, and have a central computer that understands
what their barcodes mean. We can't translate those barcodes. The
Groqit only reads UPC and EAN, and the site only translates
those two major barcodes.
See the Book Q & A "All About Books
and Barcodes" page for more information.
How do barcodes "work"?
Barcodes use black and white lines to create a machine-readable
font. The font for EAN/UPC codes contains the digits 0-9,
plus guard bars. Each digit is encoded using fours bars
of varying width, as well as position in the code. A complex
calculation is performed on the digits to ensure the scan was
correct. There is so much error-checking in a UPC-E or
EAN-13 barcode, that a missing digit can be determined.
Article on UPC & EAN codes:
http://www.adams1.com/pub/russadam/upccode.html
Link for other kinds of barcodes:
http://www.bokai.com/BarcodeActiveX/barcodes.htm
How does my Groqit communicate with the Website?
The Groqit Desktop Application, or GDA is an application that transfers
your Groqit's data to and from the Groqit site securely. It allows
you to store backups of your data on Groqit.com and to upload and download
data files. It also makes a secure handshake between the site and
your Groqit to ensure your collections are protected at all times.
Basic information on GDA and Web Sync is here.
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