TRAKWIND Scan: our own engine is now in the app

Barcode & QR Scanner Keyboard now has a second scanning engine: TRAKWIND Scan, written from scratch in C++ by SKILLO. It reads all 13 formats the app already supported, and 13 more that the standard scanning engine does not read at all.

There is no borrowed decoder and no third-party scanning SDK inside TRAKWIND Scan. The decoder is our own code, which is the point: when a customer needs a format, we can add it rather than wait for someone else to.

It runs entirely on the phone. Camera frames never leave the device, nothing goes to a server, and the engine does not log what it decoded.

It is also a choice rather than a replacement. The standard scanning engine stays the default. Under Settings → Scanning engine you pick one or the other, and you can switch back with the same tap.

The 13 new formats

• GS1 DataBar (Omnidirectional, Truncated, Stacked, Stacked Omnidirectional), DataBar Limited and DataBar Expanded — the stickers on fresh produce, meat and coupons, carrying GS1 fields such as weight, batch and expiry, which the app’s GS1 panel already shows.
• Micro QR and rMQR — the small and the long-and-narrow codes on electronics, components and thin labels.
• MaxiCode — the bullseye block on a UPS parcel label.
• MicroPDF417 — small pharma and healthcare labels.
• DotCode — printed at high speed on cigarette packs, pharma cartons and beverage packaging; the format behind tobacco track & trace.
• MSI Plessey — shelf-edge and warehouse bin labels.
• Postal codes — USPS Intelligent Mail, Royal Mail 4-state (RM4SCC), PostNL KIX and Australia Post 4-state.

Worth knowing before you switch

• MSI Plessey, MicroPDF417, DotCode and the postal codes are available and off by default. Enable the ones you need on the same Scanning engine screen.
• TRAKWIND Scan also handles the labels that used to need a second attempt: light codes laser-marked on dark plastic, and codes at any rotation or a steep angle.
• Reading distance is close to the standard engine’s. We are not claiming it reads further or faster — what it adds is the formats and the awkward cases.
• Nothing downstream changes. Scans still flow into keyboard input, history, lookup and the GS1 parser exactly as before.
• Free for users: no licence and no extra purchase.
• For fleets, the engine and its format list can be set centrally and locked — through MDM managed configuration (Intune and other EMMs) with the keys scanEngine and trakwindReadFormats, or through the cloud configuration in our dashboard for fleets without MDM.