The device is a label printer. It can be connected to via bluetooth and USB. I would imagine it is running some kind of linux, as it has a fairly complex interface/screen, but am not sure. In fact, this is something I would like to determine. But my goal is to get a shell, or some kind of 'meaningful' connection through which I can send commands/data which will trigger print events by the printer without using the manufacturer's software
Connecting to the device in ubuntu via USB creates /dev/usb/lp0. I tried connecting to this using python's serial module, but it couldn't connect to the serial port.
Via bluetooth I was also able to connect, using hcitool scan to get the device's MAC address and then rfcomm to connect (using this approach) . This created /dev/rfcomm0, which I was able to connect to and send data to using python.
Is it feasible to mimic the data normally sent over usb/bluetooth by the manufacturer's software to print without the software? I assume getting this would be possible by 'sniffing' data sent over bluetooth while a normal print command is sent by the manufacturer's software (although I suppose there's no reason it would look intelligible to a human).
If this kind of mimicry is possible, I am wondering whether simply sending the equivalent data over bluetooth, for example, would result in a print event. So far I have no reason to believe that data I send via the bluetooth connection is not being received, but I have yet to get any kind of response (data or physical) from the bluetooth connection.
Any advice/suggestions on how I might achieve my overall goal would be appreciated
This is certainly possible (sorry for the answer 6 years later, but hopefully this will help anyone later in need). I have a similar problem and this is how I solved.
I have a MHT-P80F thermo printer. I figured out in settings that it supports a protocol called TSPL. These are the instructions you need to send to a printer and tell it to do either raw text printing, or even bitmaps.
All you need to do is to construct the correct bytestream (in mostly human-readable ASCII) and send it to /dev/usb/lp0. I have not tested it via bluetooth but I assume it should be similar.
For example, if you want to print out a "Hello World", these instructions will suffice:
CLS
SIZE 80mm,50mm
GAP 5mm,0mm
HOME
TEXT 0,0,"0",0,1,1,"Hello World"
PRINT 1
Each line is separated by a "\n".
Explanations (more could be found by searching TSPL):
CLS Tell the printer to clear all previous staged commands.
SIZE Tell the printer the size of each label (width, height).
GAP Between each label there's 5mm space without paper.
HOME (Re-)locate the paper roll for a new print.
PRINT Start printing of 1 copie(s).
Note these instructions are for the use of discrete labels. For a whole paper roll it might be different. TSPL implementations on different printers may differ, so you might to experiment a bit.
Generally, if you can print a bitmap, then you can print virtually any document (e.g. using PIL in Python or Jimp in Node.js to generate an image beforehand). So here's the most useful BITMAP command:
BITMAP 16,24,40,256,0,<BYTE STREAM>
where
16: the starting (left most) X coordinate for your bitmap
24: the starting (top most) Y coordinate for your bitmap
40: the width of bitmap, in BYTES (see below)
256: the height of bitmap, in DOTS
0: mode of print, 0 being overwritting anything in that region
and <BYTESTREAM> being the binary data(black/white) of this image, from left to right and from top to bottom.
The bitmap width is given in bytes, so each byte represents 8 horizontal continous dots in the image. The highest bit 7 being most left, the lowest bit 0 most right. So if as in example we write 40 in this parameter, the image would be 40x8=320 dots in width.
The bitmap height, on the contray, is given in dots.
Most such thermal printer have a DPI of 203. This is an interesting start point to investigate into: 203/25.4 = 7.99, or rounded as 8. So for the printer, each 8 dots equals 1mm. In the above example, X=16 and Y=24 (both in dots) corresponds to starting location X=2mm and Y=3mm.
And finally, you generally do not need to inverse the color of this image. In BITMAP command, a 1 in a bit means correctly white or non-printed dot, and 0 means the black or heated dot.
I am not sure about bluetooth but for USB printing you can use the cups library (licups) and use the APIs to do the priting. It uses IPP protocol. Usually cups uses a .ppd file specific to the printer (which contains the details about the printer) for installing it. For new language versions such as PCL5, 5e, 6 etc there are generic ppd files that can be used to install any printer that uses the respective language
Related
I want to know if there is any way to send byte array ( that represent simple image ) to some application and this application will show this image on some screen that connected to current machine ?
I have 2 screen connected to my machine.
On the first screen i want to show the operation application that i wrote.
And on the other machine i want to show the output of the video that i hold => that mean that the second screen will show running images.
Is there is a way to do it ?
If there is a way so how .. ?
Most operating systems today do not allow direct access to the hardware from user mode programs. However, they do provide interfaces that can accomplish what you need.
Typical examples are using APIs like: OpenGL/DirectX/SDL
You should choose and use one, depending on your OS and exact requirements.
Most operating systems support multi monitor display. You app must create two Windows (using whatever native windowing system API available) and you can arrange them (either manually or programmatically according to what you specified). For video output you need to select some video format and use a library (e.g. ffmpeg) to display it.
I want to be able to make my printer (HP DeskJet 1280 on USB) print out all raster data I have sent to it so far, without ejecting the page. I am sending only plain raster graphics and cursor positioning commands — no vector graphics, no text.
More precisely, I have two questions:
1) After sending some raster data to the printer (with Transfer Raster Data ("\033*b%dW")), how to make it print it out right away and stop, without ejecting the page?
2) After sending a vertical cursor positioning command with a positive argument (e.g., Vertical Cursor Positioning (Decipoints) ("\033&a%+dV")), how to make the printer advance the paper to the new position right away and stop there?
(Note that even solving only (1) would be almost sufficient, because advancing the cursor could be done indirectly by sending a blank raster of the appropriate height.)
Since PCL is a page description language, it could be actually impossible to do things at such a low level. But after an extensive search in the PCL documentation and the Internet, I have not yet found a definite negative answer either.
It seems that the printer has some kind of internal buffer to store its data, and that it flushes (i.e., prints out) that buffer when it grows large enough. If there were a command to tell the printer to flush that buffer immediately without doing anything else, everything would be fine. But I have not found such a command. Even "\033*rC" (End Raster Graphics) has no immediate effect.
I am using CUPS' USB backend to communicate with the printer, and have verified (using usbmon) that the backend actually sends all my commands to the printer as soon as it sees them, so it cannot be the issue of data getting stuck in the driver.
Commands that print out partial pages include, for example, "\033E" (Printer Reset), "\033%%-12345X" (Universal Exit Language), "\033&r1F" (Flush All Pages (including partial pages)) — but all of them also eject the partial page.
Can somebody suggest a clever way to do what I want, or confirm my impression that it is an absolute impossibility?
I just finished coding a USB relay board to open and close 2 relays. First time doing any kind of .DLL programming. But now I need to code two USB bar code scanners on the same PC.
First I need to know which one of the scanners is being scanned.(I'm calling it -scan in/scan out)
And Secondly I need to capture the string to check against a database, but doing this without the scanner influencing any other program running, like if I'm focused on notepad while scanning, no text should appear on notepad.
Any info will be appreciated and Some Sample code even more.
Most barcode scanners behave like keyboards: you can use several at once, but finding out which one is doing what is not easy. I think the easiest way to do what you want is to use 2 cheap computers such as a Raspberry PI, plug a scanner on each ones and send codes to your application though IP. Considering the price of a barcode scanner, the price of 2 PI shouldn't be that much.
Normally you can program the barcode scanner with a prefix and a suffix code. For example a barcode like 123456789 get a prefix likes #S and a suffix likes #E when you scan a barcode, the barcodescanner sends #S123456789#E so you know the start and the end of the barcode. For the Second barcode you program de prefix en suffix with an other code for example #Q and #W so the second barcode scanner sends #Q123456789#W
I have a software that prints labels. It generates many pages with n columns to be printed in a label printer (commonly Argox or Zebra). I use report builder to do so, meaning I send the jobs through the windows driver and not directly to the printer.
I have this one customer that is having a really hard time printing her labels. The printer pauses for 15-20 seconds between one page and another.
I´ve reviewed each and every configuration I could and did not find anything.
To make my problem worse, my customer uses the Bartender software (wich comes with Argox) and when printing there it has not this delay. Bartender uses the windows driver as well.
Well, from the point of view of my client, the problem is with my software, I don´t blame her.
From my point of view I can´t control such a thing (pause between pages) once I am using the driver.
Am I wrong? Is there anything I could do to avoid such a delay?
Important Info
Argox OS 214 TT - PPLA
Drivers updated to the last version (7.2)
Serial Cable being used
Does the report software you use create ZPL output, or a bitmap? You can check this by setting your printer driver to print to a file. If the file is huge, >1MB, it's probably creating a bitmap and that could take a long time to send to the printer.
Bartender would create ZPL if using internal fonts and barcodes, so the output will be tiny and the printer is optimized to print native ZPL. If your software uses fonts not on the printer (Arial, Times new roman, etc), it will send the label down as a graphic instead of using the printer's built in fonts, which would result in a HUGE file even for a small amount of text. Same thing goes for graphics, inlined vs. recalled graphics
I'm working on an embedded home surveillance system. I want to interface a couple of serial-enabled JPEG capture cameras, maybe a couple of door sensors, etc. Problem is, I can't for the life of me figure out how to interface a camera to a microcontroller. Stills, streaming video, it doesn't matter - I can't find any how-to documentation on this.
I understand serial communications, and most of the camera documentation I've found out there describes the protocol necessary to instruct the camera to send the datastream down to the uC for capture. What they don't show is what you're supposed to do with the data once you get it.
Here's an example.
They show a great little video, and the datasheet describes which bytes must be sent to the camera to retrieve the image. What I need is an example or tutorial of some sort that will explain what to do with the stream of bytes that make up the image itself. How do I arrange those bytes into an image and save it as a file?
I've looked all over the place for a tutorial of some sort, but have come up dry. I'm not sure which processor I'll use for this project just yet, but this question isn't really processor-dependent. All I need is the algorithm, maybe a peek at a library, if one exists. I'll take that process and adapt it to my hardware, I just can't seem to find a place to get started.
Have any of you done this?
I think the details are pretty clear in page 10 inside this document:
http://www.4dsystems.com.au/downloads/micro-CAM/Docs/uCAM-DS-rev4.pdf
First, one package is between 64 to 512 bytes - flexibly defined by the programmer. Image size is the actual JPEG image itself....nothing more or less....just pure JPEG image. So the equation to calculate the number of package based on image_size / package_size is given in page 10.
Next, is that (package_size - 6) is to be consistently used everywhere, because 6 bytes are used up for non-data purpose, so (package_size - 6) will be just the data - but u have to reassemble it yourself.
To assemble the data from the package, u have to strip the 4 byte header + 2 byte trailer and concatenate all these from all the package sequentially one after another.
Other facts:
a. "Set Package Size" command must be sent from host to CAM - before "SNAPSHOT" command, which capture the image from the camera into the CAM memory buffer.
b. Next is to send "SNAPSHOT" command to capture the image into memory buffer.
c. Last is to send "GET PICTURE" command (only one time, but data will come back multiple times - see diagram in page 15) to extract out all the images....and it will come back in the form of "package" as we have defined the size earlier in "set package size". Since u have calculate the formula u will know when to stop asking for the next package. And there is a verification byte - u have to used that to make sure data is correct.
I have not used this camera but looks like it works exactly the same is a camera (C328) I have used. Send an image resolution/colour command. When you want get an image send an image capture command. The camera responds by sending a binary file over the serial link.