Shop Floor Hardware Checklist — What You Need for Barcode Scanning

The Short Answer: A Device, a Scanner, and Barcodes

Getting a shop floor ready for barcode scanning takes far less than most buyers expect. Standard Time® runs entirely in a web browser, so there is no server to rack, no app to deploy, and no IT project to schedule. You need exactly three things:

Three things needed for barcode scanning: any browser device such as a Chromebook, a barcode scanner or phone camera, and printed barcode labels for employees, work orders, and tasks — all connected to the Standard Time cloud, nothing to install — Everything connects to the Standard Time® cloud through a browser — there is no local software layer to install or maintain.

A device with a browser — a Chromebook, notebook, tablet, or phone.
A way to scan — a USB or Bluetooth barcode scanner, or the camera built into any phone or tablet.
Printed barcodes — for employees, work orders, and tasks, printed directly from Standard Time®.

That's the whole list. For a full walkthrough of physically setting up a station once you have the hardware, see How to Set Up a Barcode Scanning Station.

What Hardware Do I Need to Buy?

Devices: Any device that runs a modern browser works. Inexpensive Chromebooks ($150–$300) or basic Windows notebooks are the most common choice for a shop floor — they're cheap enough to replace without a budget meeting, require no antivirus or local IT maintenance, and have more than enough power to run a browser tab. Since Standard Time® stores nothing on the device itself, a damaged unit is a five-minute swap: unbox the replacement, log in, and scanning resumes.

Scanners: Start with an inexpensive USB or Bluetooth barcode scanner — plenty of models run $20–$80 and work immediately with no drivers, because they present themselves to the device as a keyboard.

Tip: Cheap tools break. A $25 scanner dropped onto concrete a few times a week, coated in dust, or run over by a cart will not last long — and replacing one every couple of months adds up in downtime, not just dollars. If you find yourself buying scanners on repeat, step up to a retail-grade scanner — the same rugged rubber-bumpered handhelds used at checkout counters at Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowe's. They cost more ($100–$250) but are built for a full shift of daily drops and dust, and they still work as plug-and-play keyboard input with Standard Time®.

Comparison of a budget USB barcode scanner costing $20 to $80 with light plastic housing versus a rugged retail-grade scanner costing $100 to $250 with rubber bumper corners, similar to scanners used at Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowe's checkout counters — Most shops start with a budget scanner and only move to a retail-grade model once breakage becomes a recurring cost.

Tier	Typical Price	Best For
Budget USB scanner	$20–$80	Testing a rollout, low-volume stations, offices, light shop use
Retail-grade scanner	$100–$250	High-traffic shared stations, dusty or high-drop environments, heavy daily use
Phone or tablet camera	$0 (already owned)	Mobile employees, quick pilots, low scan volume

Does Standard Time® Sell the Hardware?

No. Standard Time® is software only. Devices and scanners are purchased from any electronics retailer or office supply store — Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, or a local supplier all work fine. There is no proprietary equipment, no required vendor, and no hardware lock-in.

This is deliberate: because Standard Time® reads any standard USB or Bluetooth barcode scanner as keyboard input, you are never stuck waiting on a specific SKU or a support ticket to replace failed hardware. Buy whatever is on the shelf, plug it in, and it works.

Do I Need Wi-Fi?

Probably, yes. Standard Time® is cloud-based — every scan sends a request to your Standard Time® account in real time, so each scanning station needs an internet connection. You have three ways to provide it:

Wi-Fi — the most common choice for stationary or mobile stations spread across a shop floor.
A cellular data plan — if employees scan with their own phone or tablet, cellular data works with no Wi-Fi required at all.
Hardwired Ethernet — a solid option for a fixed station near a wall or existing network drop.

Watch for dead zones: Manufacturing buildings are hard on Wi-Fi — steel racking, machinery, and metal walls block a single router's signal well before it reaches the far end of the floor. A station that drops connection mid-scan is a common source of frustration.

The fix for most shops is a mesh Wi-Fi system: instead of one router trying to blast the entire building, two to four small mesh nodes are placed around the floor and relay the signal to each other. Coverage extends to every corner without pulling new Ethernet cable to every station, and shared scanning stations positioned near a work cell stay connected no matter how far they sit from the office.

Shop floor diagram showing three mesh Wi-Fi nodes placed around the building, each broadcasting overlapping coverage circles and linked to each other by mesh backhaul lines, with two shared scanning stations positioned within the coverage area where multiple employees scan in — Mesh Wi-Fi nodes relay coverage across the floor so shared scanning stations near any work cell stay connected — no dead zones, no new Ethernet runs.

Not sure how mesh actually differs from the router you already have, or whether it's really faster? See Mesh Wi-Fi vs. a Normal Router below for the full comparison and setup steps.

What Do I Need to Install?

Nothing. Standard Time® runs entirely in the browser — there is no application to download, no installer to run, and no local administrator rights required on the device. Open the bookmark, log in, and the scanning screen is ready. Plug in a barcode scanner and it works immediately as keyboard input; no driver installation step exists.

Tip: For a dedicated station, set the browser to open the scan page automatically at startup and enable full-screen (kiosk) mode so employees never see an address bar or other tabs. See How to Set Up a Barcode Scanning Station for the full walkthrough.

Does Every Person Need Their Own Scanning Station?

No. A single scanning station can serve an entire shift. Each employee scans their own username barcode to identify themselves, and the CLEAR scan resets the screen for the next person without touching anyone's running timer — see how CLEAR works on a shared station.

But shared stations can create a line — and lines cost more than they look like.

If ten or twenty employees all need to scan in at shift change and there's only one scanner, you get exactly the kind of line that turns into water-cooler talk while the clock is running. That's not a training problem — it's a hardware math problem. A second or third inexpensive scanner-and-device combo, positioned near each work cell instead of one central kiosk, often costs less than the accumulated minutes lost to a daily queue.

Scenario	Setup	Trade-off
Small team, staggered starts	One shared station	Lowest cost; rarely a line
Large shift, single clock-in window	2–3 stations near work cells	Higher hardware cost; eliminates the queue
Mobile or field crews	One phone/tablet per person	No shared hardware to maintain at all

How Many Scanning Stations Should I Set Up?

There's no fixed formula, but a workable starting point is one station per 5–10 employees who clock in around the same time, or one station per work cell if employees move between areas throughout the day. Start with a single station, watch how long the line gets at shift change and task switches, and add stations where the wait becomes noticeable rather than provisioning for worst case on day one.

Because hardware has no vendor lock-in and nothing to install, adding a second or third station later is just a purchase and a login — not a project.

Can I Use My Phone Instead of a Dedicated Scanner?

Yes. Standard Time® includes built-in camera scanning for both 1D barcodes and QR codes, so any smartphone or tablet employees already carry can become a scan station with zero additional hardware. This is a good way to run a small pilot before buying dedicated scanners, or to equip mobile employees — delivery drivers, field service techs, or workers who move between buildings — without a wired station at every stop.

Dedicated USB or Bluetooth scanners are still faster for high-volume, fixed stations, since a trigger-pull scan is quicker than framing a barcode in a camera view. Many shops end up using both: dedicated scanners at fixed stations, phone cameras for anyone on the move.

What if the Shop Floor Has No Reliable Internet?

Because the cloud edition of Standard Time® needs a live connection to record a scan, an unreliable internet connection is worth solving before rollout rather than after — mesh Wi-Fi (see above) resolves most coverage gaps inside a single building. For facilities that need to operate entirely on their own local network instead of the cloud, Standard Time® Enterprise also offers an on-premises deployment option — contact sales to discuss whether that fits your environment.

Readiness Checklist

Before your first employee scans a barcode, confirm you have:

A device with a modern browser at each station — Chromebook, notebook, tablet, or phone
A USB or Bluetooth barcode scanner per station, or a phone/tablet with camera scanning
Wi-Fi coverage (mesh if the building is large or steel-framed), a cellular data plan, or a hardwired Ethernet drop at each station
Printed and laminated barcode labels for employees, work orders, and tasks
Nothing else — no installers, no local admin rights, no drivers

From there, follow How to Set Up a Barcode Scanning Station to get the first station live in under an hour.

Mesh Wi-Fi vs. a Normal Router — What's the Difference?

A normal Wi-Fi router is a single box that broadcasts one signal from one physical location. Its range is a circle centered on wherever it sits — the farther a scanning station is from that box, and the more steel racking, machinery, or metal walls stand between them, the weaker the signal gets. Past a certain distance it simply stops reaching, which is the "dead zone" behind the earlier warning on this page.

A mesh Wi-Fi system replaces that single box with several small nodes spread around the building. Each node covers its own local area and talks to its neighbors, so the nodes work together as one network instead of one node trying to cover everything alone. A scanning station near the far wall connects to the nearest node instead of straining to reach a router on the other side of the shop.

Side-by-side comparison of the same building covered by a single router, which leaves a red dead zone on the far side with a scan station showing no signal, versus a three-node mesh Wi-Fi system, where overlapping green coverage circles reach every corner and the same scan station shows full signal — Same building, same size — the difference is where the signal comes from. One router leaves a dead zone; several small mesh nodes don't.

Is Mesh Wi-Fi Faster?

Not really — not in the sense of higher top speed. Standing right next to a single good router, you'll get speeds comparable to standing right next to a mesh node of similar spec. What mesh actually buys you is consistency: instead of one connection that's fast near the router and unusable 80 feet away through a steel wall, every scanning station gets a reasonably strong signal because it's always talking to a nearby node. For a shop floor, consistent moderate speed at every station beats a router that's blazing fast in the office and dead at the far work cell — Standard Time®'s barcode scans are small requests, so what actually matters is a reliable connection existing at all, not maximum throughput.

Devices also roam seamlessly between mesh nodes under one network name — a tablet or scanner carried from one end of the floor to the other never has to manually reconnect to a different Wi-Fi network, the way it would with two separate routers.

Mesh is not the same thing as a cheap Wi-Fi extender. A basic plug-in range extender just repeats the router's existing signal on the same radio channel, which typically cuts usable bandwidth roughly in half at every hop — and it often shows up as a second, separate network name that a device has to manually switch to. True mesh systems use dedicated node-to-node communication (often a separate radio band just for that traffic) and present a single network name throughout the building, so there's no manual switching and no bandwidth penalty at each additional node.

How to Set Up a Mesh Wi-Fi System

Buy a mesh kit with two or three nodes — consumer kits from major router brands are sold specifically as "mesh" or "whole-home Wi-Fi" systems and typically run $150–$400 for a multi-node set.
Plug the primary node into your internet modem, usually wherever internet already enters the building.
Walk the floor with the setup app and place each additional node at roughly the edge of the previous node's usable signal — not out in the dead zone itself, but the last spot before the signal starts to fade. In a dense steel building, that may mean nodes every 30–50 feet rather than the wide spacing a home installation would use.
Mount nodes up high — on a post, beam, or shelving unit — rather than on the floor. Line of sight matters more than distance in a building full of metal machinery.
Test coverage at each planned scanning station location before permanently mounting anything, using the app's built-in signal or speed test.
Connect every station to the single mesh network name. There's nothing further to configure per station — scanners and devices roam between nodes automatically as they move.

Tip: Prioritize placing a node near any shared scanning station rather than assuming one centrally located node will reach it. A station with a weak connection is exactly where a queue and a failed scan are most likely to happen at the worst possible time — shift change.

Related Resources

← Back to Learning Center Try Standard Time® Free

What Do I Need to Prepare My Shop Floor for Barcode Scanning?