Cash Draw

joftech

Hi Support,

I have now almost completed a Point of Sale solution for a customer. The customer has a cash draw that I would like to open using the solution.

How would I do this. The draw is attached to the serial port of the pc. The usual method is to send the bell command. (I think it is Control-G to the draw).

I also have a dos ustility that sends the command. If I could trigger the dos utility this would also work for opening the draw.

Thanks

Alan

aware_support

This is not easy to do with the browser technology. Since you need to do it on each client, not on the server, the browser will have to run some software to send the signal to the hardware port. It can be this DOS utility if you can copy this utility to each client.

The problem is to run this software from the browser. There are two technologies that can do this: Java applets and ActiveX controls. There are problems with both: Java applets probably won't let you run any software on the client because of their strict security policy. ActiveX controls will most probably only run in the Internet Explorer (I could be wrong here). If the latter is not a problem you can make an ActiveX control to do this (how to make an ActiveX control is beyond the scope of this forum). Then you will need to embed this ActiveX control in some Aware IM form. If you get to this stage let us know and we will advise you how to do this.

aware_support

Another idea, of course, is to look for existing ActiveX controls on the Internet that can do this, rather than develop your own.

joftech

Hi Support,

I have found softeware for triggering the draw that has been developed in Python, VB and C#. Will any of these be of use.

Thanks

Alan

aware_support

You need to convert this code into an ActiveX control or find the existing ActiveX control. I am sure you can easily convert VB or C# code into an ActiveX control - please refer to .NET documentation.