FX7400 Global reader - can it be used in USA/Canada?

[Jason Swan]

There are a bunch of motorola/zebra readers running around that are global readers (wr models).

The difference appears to be the Global readers run dual band kind of - 902 MHz~928 Mhz & 865 MHz~868 MHz where the US models run  only 902MHz to 928 MHz.

Is it possible to run a Global reader as only 902-928 Mhz?  Is this even a concern?

I am looking at fx7400 2 port models specifically for tag checks/race results and programming tags as well as potentially split points or backups, assuming that having only 2 ports does not also mean it has little strength compared to a 4 port fx7400.  But there are also lots of fx9500/9600 out there being specced as global models and I am wondering about the feasibility of those as well....

Jason

[Geoff Hall]

One model I have (ebay) was a global model. I just set it to Canada and it works fine!

 

[Patrick W]

The Global model is the 'not usa' model.  Canada will be one of the country options, and will give you the same frequencies used in the us model.   I actually have a stack of these I just got to try for split points so should have a report at some point lol.

[Rivalry Events]

I also just bought about 4 of these Motorola 2 ports on eBay for about $60-70 a pop. I set the region of two of them to Canada and the other two to Mexico and they all seem to be working just fine. 

[Jason Swan]

I have ordered two as well after the feedback to my questions.  I have nothing else - this is my beginning foray into RFID timing so I will have to figure out something for a cheap antenna to pick up so I can play with these a bit ....

[Patrick W]

I started playing with mine.  They boot up well enough, but the web interface is next to useless besides setting the region (which you have to do in order to make them work.  set it to Canada in the screen that comes up, then click on the confirm/discard option in the left menu and confirm the setting change.  It'll restart and then should be happy).  Beyond that (at least on my computer) most of the options don't work right because they use a lot of java stuff that's coded against version 1.6 of the JRE (current is 8 lol) and my browsers just ignore it (tried opera, chrome, firefox, IE).

[Tim Irvine]

Patrick,

  I have poked around in mine and I can't find any kid of scripts to run to use the GPIO for Beep on read function. I am not sure what you're trying to do with yours, but if you stumble across that feature, please let me know.  Tim

[Patrick W]

Tim,

This is somewhat what I was looking for which is what had me looking to get firmware updates working.  I eventually setup a local ftp server and was able to get the firmware updates working.  Original firmware was 2.2.0 from 2009 copyright motorola (I'm guessing it may actually have been 2.2.0.5 as I tried updating to that first as it was on the website as well and it refused saying that it was already that version), I've updated to 3.6.0 which is copyright 2015 by Zebra.  This firmware is more responsive than the old one, but still uses the old java stuff.  I was able to install a 2 y/o version of firefox which would load and eventually run all the java stuff (had to whitelist some security stuff for java apps from the ip of the reader lol), so every page in the interface (except DataWedge? which is new in this firmware, and may be a feature not on this device) works and I can do on device tag reading rather than having to use software from another machine.     From what I can see there is no onboard scripting support...  I'm wondering if GPIO usage can only happen through the API from an external software, I'm still investigating...  Of technical note the java app is an LLRP client that connects to the reader (likely) the same way ART does, I've also been using a python LLRP client from one of my linux machines to poke things around.

That being said I'd probably recommend doing the firmware update to 3.6.0 because it does seem to speed things up and make it more stable in the other apps I'm using to debug things, so probably would for ART as well.... Unfortunately it's not something for non technical people as it takes a ftp service and some magic dust... 

[Patrick W]

This is before (top) and after firmware numbers if anyone is interested