Patent ID: 7284705

Claim:
A hand-supportable semi-automatic digital imaging-based bar code symbol reading system having a working range, and comprising: a housing supporting a manually-actuatable trigger switch for producing a control activation signal when said manually-actuatable trigger switch is manually actuated; (A) a first board disposed within said housing and supporting the implementation of one or more of the subsystems identified below: (1) a multi-mode image formation and detection subsystem having image formation optics for producing a field of view (FOV) upon an object to be imaged and an area-type image sensing array for detecting imaged light reflected off the object during illumination operations in either (i) a narrow-area image capture mode in which a few central rows of pixels on said area-type image sensing array are enabled, or (ii) a wide-area image capture mode in which substantially all rows of said area-type image sensing array are enabled; (2) a multi-mode LED-based illumination subsystem for producing fields of narrow-area and wide-area narrow-band illumination within said FOV during narrow-area and wide-area image capture modes, respectively; and (3) an image capturing and buffering subsystem for capturing and buffering a digital image detected by said multi-mode image formation and detection subsystem; and (B) a second board disposed within said housing and supporting the implementation of one or more of the subsystems identified below: (4) a multi-mode image-processing based bar code symbol reading subsystem for processing said digital image captured and buffered by said image capturing and buffering subsystem and reading 1D and 2D bar code symbols graphically represented in said captured digital image; and (5) an input/output subsystem for outputting processed image data to an external host system or other information receiving or responding device; and (C) a system control subsystem, implemented on either said first or second board, or an independent board, for controlling and coordinating the operation of said subsystems, and responding to said control activation signal; wherein said multi-mode image-processing based bar code symbol reading subsystem employs a three-tier software architecture for carrying out its image-processing based bar code symbol reading operations; and wherein said three-tier software architecture comprises an application layer, a system core layer, and an operating system (OS) layer.