Keying serials by hand is the bottleneck
Reading a label by eye and typing it into a spreadsheet is slow, and it is the step where transposed characters enter the record. Every tier in the series exists to remove that keystroke.
The Xtractor Series
Scanning appliances for ITAD and secure-destruction operators. Devices are photographed, their identifiers extracted, and the chain-of-custody record is written as the operator confirms each one — entirely on hardware that stays offline.
Why operators come to us
Your customer is not buying destruction. They are buying evidence that destruction happened, to a specific device, under a chain of custody that survives their auditor. Everything upstream of that record exists to make it trustworthy.
Reading a label by eye and typing it into a spreadsheet is slow, and it is the step where transposed characters enter the record. Every tier in the series exists to remove that keystroke.
Barcodes are scratched, obscured or absent. A single label may carry a part number, a model code and a service tag alongside the serial. Reading the wrong one is worse than reading nothing.
Devices get identified at intake, on a bench, in a van and at a customer site — not only at the point of destruction. The series runs on a laptop, a kiosk or a handset, with the same workflow and the same record on each.
Clients in regulated industries increasingly cannot accept a device that talks to a cloud service. The offline posture is not something we added late — it is the starting constraint.
Three tiers
The tiers differ in how much of the label the device can read for itself. They do not differ in who has the final say — that is always the operator.
Barcode capture with an operator confirmation on every scan.
Code Xtractor is the entry point to the series. It photographs the device, extracts every barcode on the label, and presents what it found to the operator for confirmation.
Barcode capture plus on-device text extraction, with the operator choosing the identifier.
Data Xtractor adds text extraction to the barcode path. Printed labels are read on the device, and every candidate identifier it finds is offered to the operator alongside the barcode results.
Barcode, text extraction and a trained recogniser that recommends — but never confirms.
Serial Xtractor is the top of the series. On top of the barcode and text paths, a recogniser trained on real device families identifies which of the values on a label is actually the serial number.
Serial Xtractor is in development and is not available to order. We would rather tell you that here than in a sales call.
Every cell is its own build. This table shows where each one actually stands today — not where we intend it to be.
| Tier | Laptop | Offline kiosk | Mobile offline | Belt integration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Code Xtractor | beta | beta | in development | roadmap |
| Data Xtractor | in development | prototype | in development | roadmap |
| Serial Xtractor | in development | in development | in development | roadmap |
Belt integration is on the roadmap across all three tiers and is not yet shipping on any of them.
The tiers are a capability ladder, not a feature-gating exercise. The parts that make the record trustworthy are in all of them.
How it works
The same four steps run on every tier and every chassis. What changes between tiers is how much the device can hand the operator at step three.
The device is photographed with camera settings the unit sets itself — exposure, focus and white balance are re-applied on every start-up so a firmware update cannot silently change what your captures look like.
Barcodes on the label are decoded. On the Data and Serial tiers, printed text is read as well. All of it happens on the unit, using its own processing hardware.
What the unit found is presented as candidates. The operator picks the correct identifier, or rejects all of them and re-scans. This step cannot be skipped or automated away.
The confirmed identifier joins the session record. When the session closes you get a certificate of destruction and a CSV manifest, both carrying your organisation's branding.
The loop never completes on its own. There is no timeout that accepts a reading, and no confidence threshold that promotes a guess into a record.
If a record says a device was destroyed and names the wrong serial, two things are now untrue at once: a device that was destroyed is unaccounted for, and a device that still exists is recorded as gone. That failure is far more damaging than simply failing to read a label, so the whole system is built to prefer asking over guessing.
When two readings of the same label do not agree, the unit holds the device for the operator. It does not strip characters, reformat or otherwise massage one value until it matches the other.
A label may carry a part number, a model code and a service tag. Those are extracted and shown for context, but they are never offered as the serial number.
Where a trained recogniser is involved, its output is a recommendation for a person to accept or override. It has no route to writing a record by itself.
Months after a session, you may need to answer a precise question about a single device. The unit keeps what it takes to answer it.
Diagnostics are recorded for every capture, including ones that were abandoned — a capture that produced nothing is often the more interesting record.
A session produces a certificate of destruction as a PDF, plus a CSV manifest of every device in it. Both carry your organisation's name and identity — this is your document, issued by you to your customer.
Getting records off a unit is a deliberate operator action, not a background sync. On offline chassis that means an export to removable media, initiated by the operator.
Security & compliance
If you handle devices for clients in regulated industries, someone on their side will eventually ask what this equipment does with data. This page exists so you can forward it rather than write the answer yourself.
A production unit has no network connectivity enabled, sends nothing anywhere, and holds its records until an operator deliberately exports them. There is no account to create, no service to sign into, and no component that phones home.
Production units ship with connectivity disabled. This is the shipped state, not a hardening step you have to remember to perform. Where a unit needs to talk to peripherals it does so over direct local connections, not a network.
The software collects diagnostics for your benefit and writes them to the unit's own storage. Nothing is transmitted to us. We do not know how many scans you ran unless you tell us.
Barcode extraction, text extraction and trained identification all run on the unit's own hardware. No image, no reading and no record is sent elsewhere to be processed.
Records leave a unit when an operator initiates an export to removable media. There is no background sync, no scheduled upload and no automatic mount.
Production units encrypt the storage that holds captures and records, so a unit removed from your site does not become a data-disclosure incident.
Before a unit reports itself ready, it verifies its camera, extraction stages, storage and thermal state. A unit that cannot do its job says so instead of accepting scans it cannot process properly.
A certificate is only as good as what stands behind it. Behind each line on ours is a retained capture and a recorded human decision.
We answer these in writing, in detail, for any live evaluation. Ask and we will send the documentation rather than a brochure.
Buyers in this market are used to reading certification logos that turn out to mean less than they appear to. We would rather be precise.
Nabel Solutions has not been audited against a published information-security standard. If a certification is a hard requirement for your client, tell us early and we will be straight with you about the timeline.
Xtractor records what was destroyed and who confirmed it. Whether your destruction method meets a given standard is a question about your equipment and process, not about this software.
Deployment
A scanning station is not always a fixed bench. The series runs on whatever suits the place the work actually happens, and produces the same record on each.
Windows, macOS or Linux with a USB document camera. The quickest way to put a station on a bench.
Runs on hardware your team already owns. Useful for lower volumes, for a second station at peak, and for evaluating a tier before committing to dedicated hardware.
A dedicated single-purpose appliance with a touchscreen and document camera, locked to kiosk mode.
Purpose-built and provisioned by us. Boots straight into the scanning workflow, has no desktop to wander off into, and ships with networking disabled.
A hardened handset, provisioned by us and shipped locked down, for scanning away from a bench.
For collections, on-site work and audits where the device has to travel. Provisioned before it ships and locked to the scanning application.
Conveyor integration for high-throughput lines — stop-for-capture, scan, release.
Pairs a kiosk with a conveyor and controller so devices are captured as they travel. On the roadmap; not yet shipping.
On the dedicated chassis, we build the unit, install and configure the software, and lock it to the scanning workflow before it leaves us. It arrives ready to be switched on.
Evaluate on your own device mix. Label quality varies enormously between operators, and a demonstration on our devices tells you very little about yours. We would rather put a unit in front of your actual intake and find out together.
Partners & OEM
Machines destroy the device. The thing your customer has to hand their own client afterwards is a record. We build that half, and we are actively looking for manufacturing and reselling partners to carry it.
Offer serial capture and certificate generation alongside your machines, either as a bench-side unit or integrated with the line. Your customers get a complete answer; you get a differentiator that does not require you to build software.
Add a hardware product to your catalogue with a clear buyer, a clear problem and a short demonstration. We provision the units; you own the customer relationship.
If you already install, service or support equipment on ITAD sites, on-site handover and support is work you are better placed to do than we are.
We are early. Code Xtractor is in beta with its first customer. Data Xtractor is with evaluation users. Serial Xtractor is in development. We have no reseller network yet and you would be among the first.
That is a real risk for a partner and we are not going to dress it up. What we can offer in exchange is direct access to the people building the product, genuine influence over what gets built next, and terms that reflect the stage we are at rather than the stage we would like to appear to be at.
If you would rather wait until there is a track record, we understand — tell us and we will come back to you when there is one.
Questions
If your question is not here, ask it directly — we would rather answer than have you guess.
No. Production units ship with connectivity disabled and operate entirely offline. Records leave a unit when an operator deliberately exports them to removable media.
No. There is no telemetry and no background sync. Diagnostics are written to the unit’s own storage for your use. We do not know how many scans you have run unless you tell us.
No, and there is no configuration that enables it. Every record requires an affirmative action from the operator at the station. On the Serial tier, the trained recogniser produces a recommendation for a person to accept or override.
It says so and asks the operator. It will not transform, truncate or reformat one reading until it matches another. A held device is a normal outcome, not a fault.
Yours. The certificate is your document, issued by your organisation to your client. Our name does not appear on it.
A certificate of destruction as a PDF and a CSV manifest of every device in the session. Behind each line sits the captured image, what each extraction stage read, and which value the operator confirmed.
If your labels reliably carry a readable barcode, Code Xtractor is the fastest route. If serials are often only printed, Data Xtractor adds on-device text extraction. Serial Xtractor adds trained identification of which value is the serial, and is in development.
On the laptop chassis, yes — Windows, macOS or Linux with a USB document camera. The kiosk and mobile chassis are provisioned by us and shipped ready to use.
That is the only evaluation worth running. Label quality varies enormously between operators, so a demonstration on our devices tells you little about yours. Ask us about an evaluation unit.
Very few. Code Xtractor is in beta with its first customer, Data Xtractor is with evaluation users, and Serial Xtractor is in development. We would rather you knew that now than found out later.
Not at present. Nabel Solutions has not been audited against a published information-security standard. We answer security questionnaires in writing and in detail, and we will tell you plainly if a certification requirement is one we cannot currently meet.
Storage holding captures and records is encrypted on production units. We agree a decommissioning process with you before deployment rather than improvising one afterwards.
About
A small independent software studio building automation for the ITAD and secure-destruction industry.
We build the Xtractor Series — offline scanning appliances that capture device identifiers and produce the chain-of-custody records that destruction operators have to hand their own clients. The products are designed, built and provisioned by us.
We also build bespoke software and web tooling for a small number of other businesses. That work funds the product line and keeps us close to how operators actually work.
The products are opinionated in one particular way: a person confirms every record. That constraint costs throughput and we keep it anyway, because a destruction record that quietly contains the wrong serial is worse than no record at all.
We would rather tell you what a product cannot do than discover it together during an evaluation. Where this site says something is in development, it means it — you will not find a roadmap item described in the present tense anywhere on these pages.
Contact
Volumes, the device mix you handle, and what your own customers require of you. We will tell you which tier fits — including when the honest answer is that none of them do yet.
Or write to info@nabelsolutions.com directly.
Say so in your first line and we will send the written documentation rather than a sales reply.
Emailing us puts your message in our inbox and nowhere else. This site has no contact form, no tracking and no third-party service that could see it.