What are the Some other Computer Hardware devices?

A Barcode reader is an input device used for reading printing barcode Universal Product Code(UPC) available on product to be sold. A barcode reader emits of the beam of light which reflect of the barcode image on light sensitive detector in the barcode reader identifies the barcode image by recognising special bars at both the input of the image. A perfect example of a barcode reader is used in a Supermarket where Barcode scanner is the price of a product. A barcode is a machine-readable representation of information in the form of a strip of dark and light inks.

Optical Mark Reader is also known as Optical Mark Recognition. It is the process of detecting the presence of intendent market responses. It is mainly used to detect marks on a paper. It uses a beam of light that is reflected on the paper with mark to capture presence and absence of data(marks) The OMR interprets the pattern of marks into a data record and sends this to the computer for storage, analysis and reporting. OMR  is widely used to read the answer of objective type tests,  voting applications and other evaluation studies.

Optical Character Recognition is a technique for the scanning of printed page, translating it and then using the OCR software to recognize the image as ASCII text that is editable. It translates the array of dots into text that the computer can interpret as words and letters. OCR  is widely used technique for acquiring the textual data from image. It is used in many applications such as telephone bills, electricity bills, insurance premium etc. OCR technology is being developed for greater accurate recognition and is also known as Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR).

Magnetic Ink Character Recognition read the characters by examining their shape in a matrix form and the information is then passed on to the computer. The characters are printed using a special ink which contains iron particles that can be magnetized. It is generally used in banks to process the cheques for recognizing the magnetic encoding numbers printed at the bottom of a cheque.

It is a device which is used to access the microprocessor of a Smart card. There are two kinds of a smart card :-

A.  Memory card and B. Microprocessor cards 

Memory cards are the task which contain only non-volatile memory storage component and some specific security logic. Microprocessor card  contain volatile memory and microprocessor component. The card is made up of plastic generally PVC. Smart cards are used in large companies and organizations for a stronger security authentication.

Biometric sensor is a device which recognizes physical or behavioral traits of the individual. Biometric sensors are used for marking attendance of employees or student in organization and institution. As biometric sensors working with accuracy so these are widely used in security purpose also.

It is used to convert the data and image on paper into digital form. Scanner is an optical input device and uses light as an input source to convert an image into an electronic form that can be stored on the computer. Scanner can be used for storing the document in their original form that can be modified and manipulated in later on. The scanner stores images in both gray scale and color mode.

The most common types of scanner are as follows:-

A. Handheld Scanner:-  As they are very small in size which can be held in a hand. These are less expensive and less wide .Hence in order to scan a single page, image, multiple passes are required. But there handiness is a major advantage of handheld scanner.

B. Flatbed Scanner :- They are large and more expensive scanner that create high quality images.  Flatbed scanners have a flat surface on which the printed image to be scanned .These scanners can scan a page in a single pass.

C. Drum Scanners :- They are medium size scanners with rolling drum. The sheet is fed through the scanners so that the drum rolls over the entire sheet to be scanned(just as the sheets are fed in a fax machine).

We can send input to the computer through a special manual input device called microphone or mic. Mic converts the received sound into computer format which is called Digitised sound or Digital audio. To convert the voice into digital form you need an additional hardware known as Sound card. Sound is used most often in multimedia where we can make our presentations more attractive using the recorded narration, music or sound effects. A microphone can be attached to a computer for record sound.  Now a days, microphones are also being used with speech recognition software. This means that we do not have to speak and the spoken words  appear in our documents.

It is a video capturing device. Webcam is a digital camera attached to computers and can be used for video conferencing, online chatting etc. A camera connected to a computer allows anyone those are connected to the internet to view either a  still picture or motion video of a user or other object. Now-a-days webcam are either embedded into the display with a laptop and computer or connected via USB or firewire port or Wi-Fi to the computer system.

PC Card is a Credit Card size memory or input and output(I/O) device that fits into a personal computer usually on notebook on laptop computer. Probably the most common use of a PC card is the telecommunications modem for notebook computer system.

An output device is any piece of computer hardware equipment used to communicate the results of data processing carried out by an information processing to the outside world. Some of the commonly used output devices are monitors, printers, plotters, speakers, headphones and projectors etc.

Speaker is an output device that receives sound in the form of electric currents. It needs a sound card connected to a CPU that generate sound via a cards. These are used for listening music for being audible in seminars during presentations etc. Computer speakers are the speakers which are attached internally and externally to a computer system.

Headphone are a pair of a small loudspeaker or less commonly a single speaker held close to a user ears and connected to a signal source such as an  audio amplifier, radio, CD player or portable media player. They are also known as stereo phones, headsets etc.

Projector is an output device which is used to project information from a computer onto a large screen so it can be viewed by a large group of people simultaneously. These are widely used for classroom training or conference halls and in meetings with a large audience. projector  provides a temporary output display. There are two types of projector LCD projector and DLP projectors.

Ans. MP is an audio coding format for Digital audio which uses of form of losses data compression.

Ans. The I/O devices that are attached externally to the computer system machine are also called peripheral devices. These are hardware.

Ans. A speech recognition software can interpret voice data into words that can be understood by the computer.

Ans. A dumb terminal is simply an output device that accepts data from the CPU.