I’m looking at creating a stand-alone application that scans several bar codes and at the end prints a receipt. I’m trying to understand from a developer prospective if there are standard calls to print via Windows CE.
The yet unspecified device would support at least Windows CE 5 up to a Windows Mobile 6/6.5. These would be a Motorola Symbol/Datalogic type hand held scanning terminal. The application would be used on whatever device we chose, not a broad range of products.
I’ve seen third-party libraries listed. Are these still relevant with more modern Windows Mobile releases?
I can send the specific codes to a printer outside of a printing system, but I don't want to go that route if printing is can be done "normally."
I expect to use VS 2005 or 2008 with C# depending on the model's support.
There is no printer support on Windows CE devices. What we've successfully done is to connect a Zebra receipt printer to the device via Bluetooth and send ZPL code directly to the COM port emulation. We were able to print on that device like this.
There is, however, no standard way that I know of.
While I'm not sure what more detail I could add, I'll try my best to describe what we did:
We had a little Windows CE industrial device (while I think it was a Datalogic device, the process should work with other devices, too) with Bluetooth support and a Bluetooth receipt printer that was capable of understanding the Zebra printer language (ZPL).
We connected the printer to the device via Bluetooth so that we could access the printer via a "Bluetooth COM Port". From then on, we were able to send ZPL code to the printer from our own applications and have the printer print what we sent, just as if the printer was directly connected using a serial cable.
In our application we had a little ZPL template into which we filled the information required. The user was then able to walk around with the mobile device, fill in forms and print labels.
The only catch was to re-enable the Bluetooth pairing after the scanner had gone into suspend mode, but I guess that's something you have to figure out depending on the device types - maybe there are even settings to have the connection re-established on your device.
Related
currently im developing a UWP Kiosk app. This app needs to print to a PosPrinter (EPSON TM-T20II) which is connected via ehternet to the network, The app runs in another pc connected with wifi to the same network. I have created the app using a DevicePicker class just like this example from Microsoft
PosPrinter c# configuration sample
in this example you open a poppup window that lists all your connected devices and filters the Printer. You can choose it and you will have a connection to that printer. The problem is when im using the app in Kiosk Mode in Windows 10 this windows with all the connected printers will not show up, and then i cannot stablish any connection. I have look into the set-multiple-kios apps option for windows 10, but i dont know how to stablish a path to the class known as DevicePicker to allow his functionality with my Kiosk app.
DevicePickerClass
Multiple-Kiosk-Apps
I have also tried to use PosPrinter.GetDefaultAsync() method to get the Printer directly but it always returns null, i also added the deviceCapabillities in my appxmanifest.xml
So if anyone could provideme with a hint or something i will be very grateful.
I found a solution by using the class FindAllAsync(DeviceClass), this return a collection with all connected devices belonging to that DeviceClass(in my case PosPrinter), after that i just use the Deviceinformation.id to pair the device with my program, like this: Posprinter.FromIdAsync(String deviceId), This way the device picker wont appear, so the Kiosk App will just find the Device and then will pop up a permission asking to Allow the device or not.
We are developing an application which prints RFID labels using Zebra RZ400 RFID printer. Until now, we were sending ZPL commands by RawPrinterHelper class which makes call to winspool.drv.
However, we soon realized that not all tags are printed successfully so we looked for a way to get feedback about the success of the last print operation. There is a command "^RV" that is said to return a string upon a print operation that reflects operation success result.
Now, the problem is we don't know a way to get this feedback data from printer! RawPrinterHelper class does not have any method to get data.
I connected the printer to USB and used LibUsbDotNet library to communicate with the printer. I can send commands to printer successfully including "^RV" command and read from USB again to get the feedback from printer. I can get the feedback value but not every time, only once after randomly printing lots of tags.
Is there an offical SDK from Zebra to communicate with printers? What can be wrong about USB communication? Please share your experiences regarding Zebra .NET development.
There is an official Java SDK which does bi-di communications to the printer using the Windows driver (for USB. It does direct for Tcp). There is also a Windows Mobile SDK from Zebra which might work for you.
You can try dropping in the dlls, and then take a look at the UsbPrinterConnection class. Lemme know if it works for you
TCP/IP Bidirectional Programming Example Using Sockets - C#
https://km.zebra.com/kb/index?page=content&id=SA140&actp=LIST
I want to develop an app for the Windows Phone app store that communicates with my car's OBD2 port via Bluetooth.
Long story short, the app will use the bluetooth serial port to send a hex value and retrieve the corresponding value in the ECU's register. There's an android app called Torque which does this.
I can't figure out how to use the serial port though. The only bluetooth functionality mentioned is high-level stuff like pushing objects, pairing, etc. But nothing about setting baud rates or writing to a specific COM port.
Is this possible on WP7/*? Or alternatively, how can I make this possible and get my app approved for distribution?
UPDATE: I haven't been able to get my hands on a WP8 device yet, so I can't verify whether or not this is possible using SSP.
As a bonus note in case you came here looking for alternatives: you can also NOT connect to ad-hoc wifi connections, so the wife-based OBD2 adapters are no good either. There is an ugly way of connecting to the latter which involves having a laptop in your car which is simultaneously connected in ad-hoc mode the the device and is also acting as a wifi hotspot. It is utterly impractical.
Using the Bluetooth Serial Port (SSP) is not possible with public APIs of Windows Phone 7.x. As you've kind of guessed already, the app will likely not be approved for the marketplace if private APIs are P/invoked or otherwise used.
Consider upgrading to Windows Phone 8 as the Bluetooth SSP is partially available there, see Nokias Developer site for example.
I took me several time and days to research and try some codes applicable to my problem but unfortunately I wasn't able to see codes that pair and receive files (text, images etc..NOT audio or video in particular) from a mobile device.
Most of the examples found are for SENDING only (From PC to Mobile).
I have bluetooth device (USB) physically attached to my PC.
Summary:
All I need is a sample code that automatically detect/pair when a device is trying to send the file (like in Kodak kiosk but not limited to images only).
I also wanted to understand and study the code.
Perhaps use my 32feet.NET library and its ObexListener class see e.g. http://32feet.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Server-side&referringTitle=OBEX
For more advanced scenarios use Andy Hume's Brecham.Obex library and his server sample application. See http://inthehand.co.uk/files/folders/objectexchange/entry9942.aspx
Which Bluetooth stack does your PC have installed? Microsoft, Widcomm, BlueSoleil...? See e.g. http://32feet.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Supported%20Hardware%20and%20Software On Widcomm for instance the build-in OBEX server would have to be disabled to allow your server to get all the incoming connections...
I want to print a receipt containing text and barcode from MC75 [Windows mobile 6] and using a bluetooth printer (Zebra or any other).
I am very new to windows mobile and I don't know where to start and how to connect with bluetooth devices.
Please can someone provide me with some link or code to start with a print "hello world" via a bluetooth printer in c#.
Zebra provides an SDK for Windows mobile which has many examples, short sample applications, and even a demo utility. You just simply call the APIs provided and the SDK will make the proper connection to the printer via Bluetooth (or TCP) for you.
You could take a screen shot of the information on your device (example >> HERE <<), then send the file via Bluetooth.
The only other idea I could think of would be to write enough data in a text file to completely describe all of the controls displayed on the device (control type, location, size, color, any text, barcode font) then send that text file to a Windows program on the paired PC to take that information and recreate your form
...then Print from Windows.