I have a Zebra LI3678 Scanner, but i can use any other scanner if anybody has been succesfull with them.
what i want is to be able to report back to the scanner and make the scanner flash RED or Green LED.
I want to make the scanner do the following
Examples :
Scanned Exist / Scanner Beeps 1 time and Green Light Pallet
Scanned Does Not Exist / Scanner Beeps 3 times and Red Light
Current Application it’s working with the scanner now but i can’t control the LED or the Beep of the scanner, it just scans, and i do the code check(if scan exist in db then)
and display a message in the screen if not correct.
But i know it’s possible to do what i said in the Examples Above. so before i go into reading and learning how to do this. i have to ask if this is even possible to from ignition. Has anyone been successful programming back to the scanner from ignition, in any brand, any scanner?
Right now i have the scanner just give me whatever it scans, so it if scans the following barcode.
I get in the program 036000291452 + Tab Key Pressed.
with that tab.event. i do my checking against my db. and do something depending on where the barcode exist of not for example.
Example of my window below. Code also below.
so the zebra scanner has no idea if the result let call it like that. it’s valid or not. Right now it only know that it scanned something, and that it was a good scan(good scan meaning barcode is readable)
I have contacted Zebra also about this. because on their site. they have programming guide, for windows app, android app to do what i need which is communicate back to the scanner and do a error beep. and color red., so operator can know immediately, something is not right without the need of looking at the screen on the client. this guide shows how to import their module into windows or android or Ios app. but not sure how to make it work with Ignition as there is not Java guide or any information about java honestly. I’ve never programmed scanners before so willing to do it no problem in learning something new, just want to make sure it is doable before i go down that road.
After a quick google search for java examples on the scanner and a look on the SDK provided, I am not entirely sure this can be done without creating your own module for ignition. This is not my strong side though.
Thank you, unfortunately, creating and own module for ignition it is not my strong side either, but i believe that is the option, so it will be easier for me to develop and app outside ignition that communicates with SQL, it defeats the purpose of ignition, but since nobody else has even shown that this could be possible or any interest in help me with my situation, i really see no option. lucky for me. only four simple windows will use the scanner, so it should not be a problem to develop the app to do that. small windows app with 4 windows.should be pretty quick.
Thanks again for taking the time to answer and research about it.
So long as you're only wanting to use the phone as the point of input, and you're not wanting to do anything other than display message boxes for various failures, it is possible to do this using the library found here. This would require you to use the web dev module and probably build a mobile site, but I am assuming you are already doing this.
Doing it with the Mobile Module while in theory possible would require a little more heavy lifting.
Are you using the Mobile Module? If you are then you would probably need to develop an object which would access the devices camera stream. Which is what I meant by requiring a little more heavy lifting.
Without breaking into creating a module, controlling the barcode reader probably will be a challenge. Sepasoft has a barcode scanner module, but I’m not certain that it would accomplish these functions either.
If you want to avoid having them look at the monitor, you probably could have the ignition client play a sound to signal to the operator that it passed or failed. Unfortunately this means making sure the computer has speakers and depending on noise level in the area may still be challenging.
And while it wasn’t part of the original question, Perspective will make interacting with mobile cameras for this type of application easier (or it is supposed to), but I haven’t had any time to explore that function yet.
Unfortunately, since you have the scanner connected on the client side, there really isn’t a good way to control it. Having it connected over Ethernet as a TCP/IP device on the other hand might give you a better chance as you wouldn’t have to rely on client side software/hardware/driver interactions to communicate with the device.
Either way you will need to have a good understanding of the way the device works.
@grietveld has given the best alternative solution that I can think of, but there could be environmental issues (noise level, location, etc…) that wouldn’t allow for that to work.
Sepasoft not capable of doing that i ask them but it does not communicate back to scanner, so it’s not useful for me. i will use your option for now to accomplish deadline, so thank you. but i will have to look for another option. either learn to develop a modules and do it myself, or just develop a simple windows app. to just check if the scan is valid and if not beep the beeper. but for now your suggestion will help.
Depending on how the scanner works, the tcp driver might be an option. when you configure a device as tcp, in advanced properties it has an option to write back to the device. This may work for your situation, but I'm not sure. Also, if you script in a confirmation sound/beep, you can also put in a graphic like a border around the client screen and change its color according to the success or failure of the scan.
The default mode for Zebra scanners is HID (Keyboard) mode. This is the easiest and just works out of the box. 90%+ of people just use this.
Next step up is to add preamble/postamble from the scanner to be able to identify the source of the keyboard input. We do this with Ignition for all our scanners. It ensures that the barcode data is prefixed and terminated by control character that someone types. We then use the Sepasoft Barcode Scanner module that can watch for the keyboard events and allow us to process scanner data separately from keyboard data. This also has a big benefit as there need not be any “focus” on fields to provide the needed input.
Going further, you need to start using the Zebra APIs. There a MANY types of interfaces/modes for the scanners. SSI, JPOS, etc. 2D scanners can even perform image capture for some models. With the other modes, you need to implement a module or import the java libraries to make use to read any data from the scanner (it will not just show up as a keyboard anymore). This is certainly tougher, but the API (depending on the mode) gives you much more control of the scanner such as remote triggering, changing configuration, blinking LEDs, etc. We are starting to look into this for our Ignition environment as we are moving most of our shipping operations over to Ignition, but with Perspective on the horizon we may just stick with HID mode as a deeper API integration would only be possible in Vision module.
Best way to get started is to download the API examples and at least play around with the Zebra example application to give you an idea of the capabilities before you try to build anything in Ignition.
