Frequently Asked Question

The instruction below can be applied for Cipherlab 166x and 156x scanners.

Step 1 ~ Step 4 are the instruction to guide you how to set your scanner as virtual com and send data
to an application to receive data from serial port.

If your scanner is HID, which means all of scanned data can be outputted to WORD or any TEXT editor,
then you can skip step 1 ~ 5. Please check only step 6 and step 9 to get transponder and scanner firmware version.


1. Connect the 3656 to the host

Successful connection: COM port found and displayed right after plug in the USB
2. Connect the scanner to the base
2.1. Scan the two barcodes on the base in order Set Connection (top)→ BN~~ (bottom)
2.2. A short melody will return after successful connection
3. Scan the following barcodes to set the connection type as USB VCOM via 3656

4. Open HyperTerminal (Win 7 does NOT have HyperTerminal; need to download from Win XP)
4.1. Select the correct COM port (In this demonstration, it is COM 9.)
4.2. Set up the ASCII

5. Read any barcode for testing

6. Scan the following barcodes to obtain the 3656 base information

7. HyperTerminal should return the following information

8. Scan the barcode below before carry on to the next step:

9. Scan the following barcodes to obtain the scanner information:

0. HyperTerminal should return the following information