I am trying to develop a POS for Windows 8.
Unfortunately I have no experiences with handling external devices like POS-printers, displays , scanners etc.
For this moment I only want to find a way, to print my bills on a POS-printer.
After some research I found out, that there is a driver standard called OPOS. If I understand that right, than every POS-printer which comes with a OPOS-driver can be called in my application. Is that right?
And: if it is: where can I find an implementation for that (or an example) ?
I tried to use Microsoft's "POS for .NET" - but that is very old stuff and does not work in Windows 8 apps.
Can you please give me some tipps and tricks?
Check out http://www.monroecs.com and download the latest Common Control Objects for OPOS (version 1.14 as of this writing.) Then use COM Interop to access them from your .Net app. Or write your code in C++ and interface directly with them.
Related
I just got back from Microsoft Build 2018 where they announced .NET Core 3 support for WPF applications. This is great because I can finally start using some of those cool fluent design things that are available for UWP. The only problem is, it's not getting released until next year.
I started looking into converting my app to a UWP app (because I'm impatient) but I'm running into some challenges. Mainly hardware. Talking with a few guys at Build, they made it seem like it was possible to write UWP apps that connect to low-level Win32 drivers for communicating with hardware (HID printers, card readers, bar code scanners, etc). I'm not having any luck finding information about this. Just to be clear, this is not an app I want to release to the Windows Store. This is a kiosk app that runs on our own hardware.
How does one access Win32 APIs for hardware integration in UWP?
Your best bet is likely to use P/Invoke, which is technology designed to allow .NET code to call unmanaged code. Assuming that your hardware is accessed through Win32 APIs in a DLL, this may be your best option.
The pinvoke.net Web site provides specific examples of the .NET code needed to call a specific Win32 API. Perhaps those examples can help you get started.
UWP app written in C++/CX has access to the Win32 and COM APIs that are part of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP).
The APIs in Win32 and COM APIs for UWP apps is only for C++, you can not use the C# to access it directly. Please see Visual C++ Language Reference (C++/CX) to get more details about C++/CX.
But, you can create a Windows Runtime component in C++/CX, then call it from C#, you can see the Walkthrough here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/winrt-components/walkthrough-creating-a-basic-windows-runtime-component-in-cpp-and-calling-it-from-javascript-or-csharp
I'm developping a SmartDevice application (Pocket PC 2003 template) in C# for a device with Windows Mobile 6.1. I need to use the camera of this device (photos, video); to do this work i tried using the CameraCaptureDialog class but it does not work for Pocket PC applications.
So, I documented on the internet and found that I probably refer to DirectShow API, but the problem is that I do not know where to start because I can't found a working/correct example.
My questions:
Is this the right way? Are there alternatives?
Where I can find a very good example that shows how to do this work?
You may try directshowbetcf: http://alexmogurenko.com/blog/directshownetcf/ if you really want to go with DirectShow and NetCF.
There's plenty of examples of directshow on the web. There is a site dedicated to converting the API over to C# which makes it a lot easier, maybe this was it http://directshownet.sourceforge.net/about.html. I struggled with DirectShow until I read the book "programming directshow" from microsoft press. About a third of that way through that book it all seemed incredibly easy and I was able to complete what I wanted. In the end it's a lot like referencing any library and using the classes from within that library. The added difficulty is that you need to add wrappers because they are all COM objects but that has been done for you.
This might be useful to you to understand the DirectShow technology. Basically gives a start to DirctShow and explains some of the important points. But its C++ not C#. Hope this help
Basic Video Capture
DirectShow is the video capture API in Windows Mobile 6. There is a Video Capture Filter there and all in all things are designed pretty much the same way they are in Windows.
The problem is that however that this is a native API, and not just in Windows Mobile. To develop in C# you need some bindings and they are missing. On desktop there is DirectShow.NET, which is a missing piece, but it does not seem to fit well for CE. Yet you still need to fill this gap in Windows Mobile.
To work it around you have a few ways, the first would be to go through DirectShow.NET and update it appropriately to start working on your device, strip parts missing in mobile OS etc. This would get you a twin for DS.NET but for mobile operating system.
Another option would be to do some C++ development and implement the minimal sufficient feature set in that domain, exposing the component via COM. Then you will reference this from managed code and things will get connected together. And another obvious option would be to use a third party solution which already does one of the mentioned above.
I need to write VoIP/SIP Soft Phone in C# using WPF interface with Audio support only.
I need to have call transfer, call conference, and recording of conversations in mp3.
I've looked at VoIP SDK from ABTO LLC, but it is slow at application startup (30 seconds to start application, I think it's related to loading activex part of this sdk).
I've also looked at SIP.Net, but it's only for SIP and doesn't contain components for voice data transfer.
I have very limited time only 2 months from zero to fully working app.
What SDK can I use to accomplish this task?
Windows 7 must be supported.
We have done this using SipekSDK. It's written on top of famous pjSIP open source SIPClient project. It does all the operations you have mentioned in the question.
https://sites.google.com/site/sipekvoip/
What is the Sip server you are going to use ? If its not asterisk, you can have a look of microsoft's Lync here.
You can download the Lync SDK and start exploring. Not just the audio call, Microsoft Lync has features like video call, chat, presence, conference etc.... and ofcourse connectivity to landline/pstn through voip providers
Another interesting article explaining the different SDKs for unified communications can be found here
Edit: If its for Asterisk, Sipek is the only available free opensource but we had lot of problems in installing in clients system like
C folder access
Poor device
support
Port conflict- If any
other voip app like qutecom runs on
5060, then Sipek wont run as the
port is being used already.
I struggled with this exact issue and eventually came across ABTO LLC.
They have an SDK available that supports Win 7, Win XP and can be used in WPF.
We did ask them though to build a separate SDK example for us as we are using ClickOnce for our deployments and so registering external libraries is impossible, but they graciously did it and i think have integrated into their SDK, if not then ask them to give it to you.
We are using a FreeSwitch SIP Server combined with ABTO's library and it is working like a dream. We are doing VoIP, Video and Conferencing and have had no issues at all.
The application I added the VoIP functionality to is a WPF 4 app.
We are designing a solution that will be used on an internal network.
One of the requirements is to have an extra level of security beyond a simple user name and password.
Does anyone have information about how to implement a finger print reader in a .net application?
We have Thinkpads with a finger print reader.
you need an sdk (software development kit) to go with your hardware. Add that to your project references and you can communicate with the device.
It has to come from the hardware vendor.
I'm not sure which reader the Thinkpad has, so I can't give you specific information.
Have a look at the BioApi. They have a c# wrapper and if your device is BioApi compliant, you should be able to get it running. (Note, I had to modify the wrapper, but it is a fine base.)
The API can be found here: API
Also one can be found here: Not sure on compatibility
I have got a monitor with multitouch overlay on top of it. It works fine with Windows 7 but I want to write a multitouch application in C# for Windows XP which doesn't support touch feature out of the box. There is no documentation whatsoever and I emailed the manufacturer but never got a reply.
However the device works with Google Earth, which doesn't natively support multitouch, on Windows XP. So I think it generates many types of messages together i.e. WM_TOUCH for Windows 7, one for Google Earth COM API, and probably its own messages either in UDP or Windows message form. How can I trap all communications and learn the protocol?
OllyDbg is a very low-level debugger that allows you to see a lot of the messages going back and forth on the machine. I've seen it used to reverse-engineer a USB device driver's messages to figure out how to interact with an item.
I suspect that would be an excellent place to start. It should allow you to determine how the messages are being passed and, perhaps, start teasing apart their structure.
There are solutions like Tuio around that do not rely on Windows 7. Maybe a tuio (or alternative) implementation would make you life easier.
I've recently been developing on the Windows 7 platform for multitouch. I'm using UniTuio -- see http://xtuio.com You can look at my question I had to get it working. I'm also using a bridge for Windows 7 called Touch2TUIO, it seems to work quite well. If you need to make the mouse inactive see my question here: using windows 7 with unituio