Patent ID: 8517271

Claim:
An optical code symbol reading system comprising: a hand-supportable housing having a light transmission aperture; a manually-actuated trigger switch integrated within said housing; an optical code symbol reading subsystem for optically reading a code symbol in the field external to said light transmission aperture, and generating symbol character data representative of the read code symbol; one or more light emitting diodes (LEDs) for producing a visible illumination; and an optical-waveguide structure, disposed in said hand-supportable housing, and having an optically-translucent region about said manually-actuated trigger switch, and adapted for coupling said visible illumination produced from said one or more LEDs, so as to illuminate said optically-translucent region about said manually-actuated trigger switch, thereby causing said optically-translucent region to glow and visually indicate where said manually-actuated trigger switch is located on said hand-supportable housing; wherein said optical code symbol reading subsystem comprises a digital image capture and processing subsystem comprising: an area-type image formation and detection subsystem having image formation optics for producing a field of view (FOV) upon an object to be imaged and forming an image of the object on an area-type image detection array, during illumination operations in an image capture mode, and detecting 2D digital images of the object; a LED-based illumination subsystem for producing a field of illumination within the FOV of said image formation and detection subsystem during said image capture mode, so that light transmitted from said LED-based illumination subsystem and reflected from said illuminated object and transmitted through said light transmission aperture is detected by said area-type image detection array; an image capturing and buffering subsystem for capturing and buffering 2-D images detected by the image formation and detection subsystem; and a digital image processing subsystem for processing said 2D images captured and buffered by said image capturing and buffering subsystem so as to read one or more code symbols graphically represented in said 2D digital images and generating symbol character data representative thereof.