USB mass production each with their own serial number
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We're getting close to being finished with this program I've been writing. Now it's almost time to go to production. For production we need to copy my program and database to a USB stick, pull the next available serial number from an Excel spreadsheet (or another database), open the database on the USB stick and record the serial number there and in the Excel spreadsheet. Simple, simple code, right? Yeah... until we think about the fact that we're going to be mass producing these USB sticks several at a time. I know the first order is for like several hundred so there's definitely not time for someone to sit there and do this one stick at a time. However, I can't imagine that this is something new. There has to be some combination of hardware/software out there that will not only copy the files to the USB stick (we've found several of those) but also allow us to put a unique identifier on each stick. Ideally I'd like to be able to put the serial number in the database but if it's a text file or some other file format that would probably work too as long as I can figure out how to access the number because it has to be something that my program can show the user. Help? Ideas? Thanks!!!
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
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We're getting close to being finished with this program I've been writing. Now it's almost time to go to production. For production we need to copy my program and database to a USB stick, pull the next available serial number from an Excel spreadsheet (or another database), open the database on the USB stick and record the serial number there and in the Excel spreadsheet. Simple, simple code, right? Yeah... until we think about the fact that we're going to be mass producing these USB sticks several at a time. I know the first order is for like several hundred so there's definitely not time for someone to sit there and do this one stick at a time. However, I can't imagine that this is something new. There has to be some combination of hardware/software out there that will not only copy the files to the USB stick (we've found several of those) but also allow us to put a unique identifier on each stick. Ideally I'd like to be able to put the serial number in the database but if it's a text file or some other file format that would probably work too as long as I can figure out how to access the number because it has to be something that my program can show the user. Help? Ideas? Thanks!!!
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
Hi, two remarks for you: 1. when manufacturing USB sticks with code on them, I gather you buy the USB sticks and somehow put your code on them, so you have to insert them in a PC at some time (unless you are ordering really large quantities and can have the stick manufacturer do this for you). So that is also the time you do your specialization stuff. 2. You should be aware that most, if not all, USB sticks contain a unique ID that is (a) easily accessible from code (WMI), without requiring admin rights, and (b) is unique within each vendor, and very likely to be globally unique. So maybe a better idea is to keep the content of all the sticks identical, and tell them apart by the ID number they already have. :)
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We're getting close to being finished with this program I've been writing. Now it's almost time to go to production. For production we need to copy my program and database to a USB stick, pull the next available serial number from an Excel spreadsheet (or another database), open the database on the USB stick and record the serial number there and in the Excel spreadsheet. Simple, simple code, right? Yeah... until we think about the fact that we're going to be mass producing these USB sticks several at a time. I know the first order is for like several hundred so there's definitely not time for someone to sit there and do this one stick at a time. However, I can't imagine that this is something new. There has to be some combination of hardware/software out there that will not only copy the files to the USB stick (we've found several of those) but also allow us to put a unique identifier on each stick. Ideally I'd like to be able to put the serial number in the database but if it's a text file or some other file format that would probably work too as long as I can figure out how to access the number because it has to be something that my program can show the user. Help? Ideas? Thanks!!!
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
We ended up finding a company called NexCopy and according to their salesman they can do what we need to do. They copy stuff over in two stages, apparently. The first stage is the same for every stick that's plugged into the unit and that's when we'd copy over our program. Then they pull information from separate staging files for separate sticks. So stick number 1 would pull additional data from folder #1, stick #2 from folder #2, etc. That's where we'll put our serial number. Thanks all!
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan