Hi All... I've a customer who does not want to use the EMDK calls to talk to the MSR on an MC75. They are migrating from Intermec 700s, and the old Intermec MSR was able to talk to the application just by opening up a COM port... so the customer argues that we should be able to do the same. So, I need to get the MSR working in their app without using the EMDK. Two questions then: can we call the MSR by opening up a COM port or do we need to use the dll (and if so, why? what makes it special and unique?)? Alternatively, has anyone got a plugin for Datawedge 3.1 that can do this? I've burnt a few hours trying to get this working myself, but am getting nowhere fast. I know Datawedge 2 can handle this, but I'm not sure we want to enable MSR input all the time... Thanks as always! -JP
MSR Plugin for Datawedge 3.1? (or other ways to talk to the MSR)// Expert user has replied. |
3 Replies
If the requirement is to just emulate the way that the Intermec terminal interacts with the MSR on our MC55 (presumably so that the original source code does not have to change), the the best way is probably to write a stream dll that does just that. The stream dll can use the published EMDK calls to interact with the MSR. It can also publish (on say a virtual com port) an interface to the application as required. Richard LH
Hi, Generally two layers of MSR dll's are included in any of those MCD devices which supports MSR, they are MSRMC50.dll (driver layer) & the MSRAPI32.dll (API Interface layer). Most of our MSR application's internally call the API's exposed by MSRAPI32.dll, however if you do not intend to use MSRAPI32.dll API's, you can still directly call API's exposed by the MSRMC50.dll layer. The MSR driver will internally open the COM port and send few MSR command's (setting Baud Rate, setting track formats etc) in order to make the MSR unit fully functional. You may not actually need the EMDK to talk to MSR. As mentioned above the API32.dll is part of the MC75 image, so the application developers just have to load the API32.dll to talk to the MSR using the exposed API's. The EMDK help file describes the exposed API's. Thanks, Sateesh
Please note calling MSRMC50.dll directly is neither supported nor recommended. One of the options for customers is to contact the MSR manufacturers directly and get documentation for communicating with the units.