Several questions / requests

JDusart · Post by **JDusart** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 7:52 am

i saw on the main page a picture from 'Gylemiur Community Center, Edinburg, Scotland' where they seem to use an epson printer, a cash drawer and a pole display.

My problem is this one :

I need to use an epson POS printer (TM-U950) and a pole display ( DM-210 )

Physically, the printer is connected to the computer by a serial port, and has two paper rolls printable with 40 characters. The pole display and the cash drawer are connected to the printer.

I have the printer manual and in it i found the character sequences to pop the drawer, and to print on either or both paper rolls and to send data to the display pole.

I tried to print on each roll and to display on the pole directly with hyperterminal and it worked fine.

I saw serial drawers should word, so i have created a serial.bat file to send the correct sequence through COM1 and pop the drawer, and tested ok in posconfg, but i cannot have the drawer to pop at the end of a sale, because it seems the printer module in POS locks COM1.

I did not find the solution to my problem using the documentation ( or maybe did i miss it )

My questions/requests are :

Is it possible to have the drawer configured to use the printer connection, sending the correct sequence to the printer
Is it possible to send printer codes before header / body / footer / coupon to have the printer to print the body on both rolls and the rest only on client roll ( it would also make possible to use bold or italic fonts for header/footer )
Is it possible to display on the pole while adding items to the transaction or while adding money perceived ( I.E. : 20 EUR in cash and the rest using a bank card ). this would require to send special characters then the characters to display to the printer port.

P.S. As a developper knowing ASM and basic ( among other languages ), I am ready to help if these features are not currently available.

Thanks.

Jonathan Simpson · Post by **Jonathan Simpson** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 9:30 am

POS does not currently support a pole display. If you have one and have time, and want to figure out the codes for it, feel free to give it a shot.

I tried working something out once before, and I think Dale and I had something that half worked, but that was for a Logic Controls Pole Display, as I recall.

I guess the key to making the pole display thing work is to have a basic set of supported commands, and then a file for each brand and type of pole display which tells POS what characters to send for a specific command. For example, you would need to know line feed, carriage return, and a few others, but none of the really advanced stuff (like scrolling idle messages) would need to be built in. I'd be glad to help with this stuff in my free time, in between aprint.

Feel free to stop by chat @ http://home-nets.biz/chat so we can exchange some ideas. Short term, its possible to use a screen scraper (in basic, the SCREEN function). If you can make something which will read off the appropriate portions of the screen and send the info to the Pole display, I can use good ol PB35 to compile it as a TSR. Just keep in mind that POS changes the page when you fill the first 12 items, so any such program would have to account for that. Thus far, I have not had time to work something out that does this... that, and the lack of a Pole display made it impossible to test.

Jonathan Simpson, jsimpson@home-nets.biz

Post by **Andrew** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 3:27 pm

Pole Display
Gylemuir's pole display is simply showing a static message set by another program. POS has no control over this, and it is unlikely it ever will due to the massive number of models out there, all requiring different codes and sequences and the simple fact that we don't have a display to test with.

Your Printer/Drawer
Are you trying to say that your drawer has a serial printer connection which connects to the printer? This is odd, if it connects to the printer it would normally have an RJ11 connector (like a phone connection). If it has an RJ11 connector, you can set the codes from within the POSCONFG program.

It is stated that serial drawers and printers are not recommended for use with POS due with the sheer fact that they are so many variables to setup.

Your request about rolls is new - I don't believe this would make it into the program due to the fact that Dale bases the addition of such features on how many users it will benefit, how much of the valuable space it will use up etc...

Bold/Italic Fonts
We're using DOS here - not windows, although it is possible for some printers to have control codes for fonts and text modes, it's not currently possible to setup in POS.

Nathan · Post by **Nathan** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 3:50 pm

Did somebody just get caught out?

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 2:45 am

Yes thats mine!

Its actually Gylemuir Community Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland!

I was running the pole display with a message using its own test software.

The pole display runs using OPOS drivers. You would use the Epson OPOS Hydra drivers for the Pole attached to the 950.

Neither Pole or 950 Serial units work with DH-POS at present i'm afraid.

I have tested them using "Kaching/1pm POS" another freeware pos program, but it is no where near as reliable as DH-POS.

Alan

JDusart · Post by **JDusart** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 5:22 am

Alan wrote:Its actually Gylemuir Community Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland!

Sorry, i cut/paste it from the POS website.

for the connections :
The drawer is connected to the printer using a 6-pin connector like a RJ-11 one, and the serial.bat opens the drawer when i'm in DOS and POS.exe is NOT running.
The pole display is connected to the printer using a RJ-11 type connector ( but with a special wiring because electric supply uses this cable too ) and works well when i access it from hyperterminal ( POS.exe not running )

For the pole display, it's easy to use : i send some special ESC sequence to the printer then everything i type is sent to the pole display.

The problem now :
When i'm in the POS.exe software, the COM port seems locked and so i cannot send anything to the display or the drawer. Thus the serial.bat has no effect, and the POS program does not make the drawer pop.
I cannot send anything to the display for the same reason.

I have a possible solution in mind but it will take time and i would like to avoid this if some other solution is possible : send everything from POS to a file then use an external program to print.
The thing i fear with that solution is to experience bad printing due to the fact the POS program and the print program have no way to stay synchronized, while it will also take some time to develop this solution.

so :

For now, the pole display is not a very high priority, the request i have is to be able to send ESC-sequences to format the 4 parts of the sales ticket : Header, Footer, Body and Coupon, in the same way we can define ESC sequence for the cuter bar.
This would permit to everyone to use italic/bold text for coupon or header, and would also make it possible for me to select which paper roll will be printed for each part of the ticket.

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 11:22 am

>Sorry, i cut/paste it from the POS website.

No probs - I've emailed Dale before about it...

The Epson TM-U950 is a 2.5 station printer, the left hand roll at the rear is for reciepts, the right is for an audit roll, and of course the front is the cheque/slip station. http://pos.epson.com/pointofsale/statio ... rs/tmu950/

Obviously for DH-POS you just need say a TM-U210PB (autocutter) or TM-U210PD (no cutter) for standard paper print or an Epson TM-T88P for thermal printing. At present only Parallel versions are supported, and only the cutters and cash drawer ports can be activated, so no cheque/slip, audit print or pole displays for the moment.

You will need to produce your own program with all of our programming knowledge, using the Epson OPOS kit (free)

>for the connections :
>The drawer is connected to the printer using a 6-pin connector like a RJ->11 one, and the serial.bat opens the drawer when i'm in DOS and >POS.exe is NOT running.
>The pole display is connected to the printer using a RJ-11 type connector >( but with a special wiring because electric supply uses this cable too ) >and works well when i access it from hyperterminal ( POS.exe not ??>running )

Its an RJ-11 for the cash drawer port on the printer, and its actually an RJ-45 type connector for the Pole Display iirc. The Cash drawer port is of course fired from an ESC code (which won't work in your case as you don't have a Parallel unit)

That Epson TM-H6000P that is in my picture has got both the ports as well, but I can't get the Hydra (the DM Pole display port) to work with a pole display from an Epson IM-300 Register. The pole that you see there is part of the Digital DecPOS 2 base unit, and runs from an EasyIO card partly integrated into the motherboard.

>The problem now :
When i'm in the POS.exe software, the COM port seems locked and so i cannot send anything to the display or the drawer. Thus the serial.bat has no effect, and the POS program does not make the drawer pop.
I cannot send anything to the display for the same reason.

I'm guessing that you are using NT/2000/XP? If so the COM ports are locked.

Alan

JDusart · Post by **JDusart** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 11:53 am

in fact i'm running an old W'95 and the conputer cannot handle much more since it only has 2 Gb HDD and 64 Mb ram

patrick · Post by **patrick** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 7:35 pm

Jonathan Simpson wrote:POS does not currently support a pole display.

When do you think that Pole Display will be supported?
I own a Epson pole display.

Best Regards,
Patrick Andersson

Jonathan Simpson · Post by **Jonathan Simpson** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 8:56 pm

Pole displays may be supported, some day, anyway. The thing is, most PDs are serial, and DOS support of serial under NT/2K/XP is rather limited (usually doesn't work). The other problem is the simple fact that none of the people who write stuff for POS have a Pole display. Even if we did, every one is a little bit different.

Now, solutions... well, the best one would probably be to send things to an external file, because then we have options. Something like aprint (or even aprint itself) could then send the data to the correct port, thus getting around the DOS serial port issues under NT/2k/XP. For DOS, another solution would be needed, but I think this is the best angle of attack.

Any other ideas?

Jonathan Simpson

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 7:37 pm

Would it be possible to dump the data for the pole display into a file, and then those who have the displays could write their own programs to send it out (and then possibly post them for others)?

Then, say, if you had a computer with two video cards, it would be easy to write something to display that on the secondary display, and you could also display other promotional items if you wanted.

Just a thought,
CBL.

Post by **Andrew** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 4:20 am

CBL

Indeed, quite possible - if someone wants to write something to do this, they are more than welcome.

However, you would need to consult Dale on the dumping to file thing as we know he's a busy wee man

DHES

Several questions / requests

Pole Display

Aha!

informations

ok.

Re: Pole Display

When... well.

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