Our PM5 Bluetooth scanner was designed to be as light and small as possible so you can wear it with just one finger, or carry it in your pocket with a sled. This is to help warehouse workers whose task consists of hours-long scanning of items, which can take a toll on wrists and arms if they’re using heavy scanning devices.
Add a big screen to the fun-size Bluetooth scanner
Since PM5 is mainly built for making scanning as light as possible, you will need an additional device in case you want to process the captured data or check them in real-time. Point Mobile’s Android mobile computers can easily connect to the little Bluetooth scanning machine and help you check and process data with a user-friendly interface and easy-to-navigate touch screen, guaranteed by the World’s most popular mobile operating system and the wide range of solutions it offers you to choose.
Once paired with a compatible Android device, workers can see the data PM5 is reading in real-time on the screen, which will reduce errors even more and boost productivity. However, if the users have to find the PM5 on the Bluetooth setting every time they want to pair the devices, it will be a huge waste of time and frankly a big annoyance for those who are fairly used to the instant-connecting consumer wearable devices of today.
Tap-to-Pair: Use NFC for Bluetooth connection
Thankfully, PM5 comes with an NFC chip that allows it to connect to Android devices with NFC-readers such as PM90, PM85, and the latest PM75 mobile computer: Tap-to-Pair.
As shown in the picture, all you have to do is get PM5 close to the back of the PM90 mobile computer where the NFC antenna is located, and both devices are connected through SPP and HID mode, which means the screen of PM90 will now show you every data captured by PM5 without delay.
Supporting both SPP and HID mode
SPP and HID refer to types of Bluetooth connections. SPP (Serial Port Profile) supports general Android devices, which allows the host device to configure PM5 to the user’s need including notification and symbology settings. Meanwhile, HID (Human) supports connection with general Android devices as well as Windows 10 PC, and this is the mode through which PM5 sends scanned data to the host device.
The following table shows types of Bluetooth connections and supporting host devices.
| Bluetooth Modes | Supporting host devices |
| SPP (Serial Port Profile) | – Point Mobile Android devices (Ring Control app) – General Android devices (Ring Control Lite app) |
| HID (Human Interface Device) | – Point Mobile Android devices – General Android devices – Windows 10 PC |
| BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) | (Used only for updating Bluetooth firmware) – Point Mobile Android devices – General Android devices |
Other options to pair
If all you need to do is configure PM5 to your needs, there’s another way to pair it to Android devices: Scan-to-Pair. As you guessed from its name, you can scan a barcode to pair the two devices.
First, you have to open the Ring Control (Lite) app on your Android device and go to Scan-to-Pair. All you have to do is scan the barcode on the screen with your PM5 and it will be connected to the Android device in SPP mode and allow the host device to change the settings of the PM5. However, it will not allow PM5 to send captured data to the host device, as it requires connecting in HID mode.
For Windows PC, you’ll need to go to the Bluetooth settings and find the PM5 in the nearby Bluetooth device list to connect it. PM5 supports both SPP and HID mode for Windows PC.
Learn more about PM5 Bluetooth scanner ➜
