Labview 2017 Barcodes

[Dragonrider]

Greetings,

I inherited a project developed in Labview 2017 that I am working on. The need is to be able to program a board with the board serial number. This can only be accomplished via MODBUS. I have no familiarity with that protocol so I am using a program called Simply Modbus. My issue is that 8 different memory locations must be programmed to fully program the serial number (it is 16 characters long). I have created a program to convert the alpha-numeric characters to the proper decimal equivalents. The issue is that the operator has to correctly enter these 8 decimal values which are 6-7 digits long. A mistype will be very likely. To that end I am trying to convert the numbers to a barcode to be scanned in.

I have tried 3 of 9, 3 of 9 extended,  and 128 barcode fonts but am unable to scan any of them, even when printed out. Not sure what I am missing. Looking for any help possible with this.

Thanks

[Kyle97330]

For the 39 barcode types you need to start and stop the string to be scanned with an asterisk.  Did you include asterisks?

However, I wouldn't pursue that route.  LabVIEW has 3 different MODBUS libraries free and available for use and shouldn't be too hard to get running, so you don't have to have a weird Rube Goldberg setup.

[Sebastian.Weber]

First of all: Am I correct that LabVIEW somehow generates a serial number, which is then written to the electronics via "SimplyModbus" (which itself is also written in LabView)?

That's really ugly, especially since Modbus is not that complicated, and libraries are available for LabView.

To generate barcodes, I use ZINT (https://zint.org.uk). The easiest way is to use it as command line tool, where it generates a picture file like a PNG, which can then be read by LabView.

[PhillipDBrooks]

Most barcode scanners attach to the computer appearing as a keyboard.

Scanners typically come with a manual that allows you to program/customize them to behave in different ways.

• The scanner might add a CR/LF to the string
• It may include or exclude the special characters (for example asterisks) from the string output.
• It may not be enabled to detect the barcode type you are scanning (3 of 9)

You might need to program the scanner for your specific use, or parse the output string of the scanner to find the bytes that you want to use to construct the modbus messages.