Patent ID: 7611063

Claim:
An automatically-activated code symbol reading system, comprising: a hand-supportable housing having a light transmission aperture through which a field of view (FOV) passes; an automatic object detection subsystem disposed in said hand-supportable housing for automatically detecting the presence of an object in at least a portion of said FOV; an automatically-activated code symbol reading mechanism, disposed in said hand-supportable housing, for repeatedly reading one or more code symbols on an object in said FOV, within a predetermined time period, and in response to each new successful reading of one of said code symbols within said predetermined time period, producing a new symbol character data string representative of said read code symbol; a data transmission circuit, disposed in said hand-supportable housing, for transmitting, when activated, a selected one of said produced symbol character data strings to a host system operably connected to said automatically-activated code symbol reading system; a manually-activatable data transmission switch, integrated with said hand-supportable housing, for generating a data transmission control activation signal in response to the actuation of said manually-activatable data transmission switch within said predetermined time period; and a system control subsystem for (i) automatically activating said automatically-activated code symbol reading mechanism in response to the detection of said object in at least a portion of said FOV, and (ii) automatically activating said data transmission circuit in response to the generation of said data transmission control activation signal so that a symbol character data string, produced currently with or immediately subsequent to the activation of said manually-activatable data transmission switch, is transmitted to said host system.