Wireless Bluetooth® printing in extreme environments

The Challenge:

Printing in extreme conditions

Heyer Blomstergrossisten B.V. (www.heyer.se) is a Dutch flower wholesaler that purchases flowers in large quantities at the worlds biggest flower auctions of FloraHolland. Most of the stock is delivered to customers in Sweden and Finland. 10 conditioned trucks make sure that flowers and plants are kept fresh while they are being transported hundreds and thousands of kilometres. 

The truck drivers visit many customers during a day. At every stop the driver needs to print delivery notes and invoices. A hand held Motorola device connects the truck driver to the ERP systems making the documents available. In the past they had constructed a cradle in which the hand held device was placed. In the bottom of the cradle there were a set of connectors that connected the handheld device to a printer.

The solution was a bit shaky. Sometimes the Motorola device could not connect to the printer. At other times the printer had trouble handling paper and toner in the cold climate in the cargo hold. Therefore Heyer were looking for a replacement solution.

The Solution:

Durable printers and wireless Bluetooth® printing

The Heyer IT department was looking for a solution that would be able to work in the rough conditions in a cargo hold with a maximum temperature of 5 degrees Celsius. On the printer side they had found a Ricoh printer model with solid ink and paper handling made for low temperatures.

With that sorted out they needed a method to connect the handheld Motorola devices with the printers. Due to the previous connection issues with the cradle a wireless solution was preferred.

When the people at Heyer heard about the new Bluetooth® Printer Adapter from MPI Tech they decided to try it out. After a trial period they decided, that the wireless file transfer between handheld device and printer was exactly what they needed. 

But first a bit of customisation was required. The Bluetooth® Printer Adapter PCBs were removed from the casings and were built into the Ricoh printers. The printers were installed in the cooled cargo hold compartments on a custom shelf right beside the flowers.

The Benefits:

Reliable mobile printing solution

The customer is very satisfied with the new wireless print solution. The solution is stable, reliable and more user friendly. The truck driver can send the print to the printer without being physically next to it, before he enters the cargo hold. The solution is much less vulnerable in the cold and humid conditions.

More information

Contact you local MPI Tech sales office to get more information about the Bluetooth® Printer Adapter.  

Links:

Download the case study -  Wireless Bluetooth® printing in extreme environments (192.04 KB)

Download the datasheet -  Bluetooth Printer Adapter (335.46 KB)