03-01-2014 09:08 PM
I am a student, I have a finger print time attendance device with me. I want to develop an application in labview using tat device as only an attendance log.
all the other control is done from LabVIEW . It has an RS232 port a USB port and an ethernet port. which is the best to use for communication between device and LabVIEW ? I dont know the make of the device so how do i establish communication ?
Thank you
03-01-2014 09:17 PM
03-01-2014 09:26 PM
Is there no other way to find out what protocol it uses ? because i dont think i can access any info abt the manufacturer
03-01-2014 09:50 PM
03-01-2014 09:58 PM
itried googling the part number. tried using a barcode scanner to figure out what it is, but failed to gat any info. it was a dump in college given to me by my prof to make something out of it. i guess it remains a dump since i cant access any info about it
03-02-2014 09:59 AM
Do you have the rest of the school year just to figure out how to communicate with the device?
Consider the number of possibilities with the RS-232 port: Standard communications rates include 300, 600, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 38400 baud, and others. You can have 1 or 2 stop bits, 7 or 8 data bits, four options for parity, several options for hardware or software handshaking, and then you get into the communications protocol, which has never been standardized. If you do not have the correct baud rate and frame size, you cannot even begin to communicate with the device.
If you can force the device to transmit (without knowing any of the above) and you are very patient and persistent, you might be able to get a good start on baud and framing by observing what the device sends with an oscilloscope. Think hours to get baud, stop bits, data bits, and a guess as to parity. If you have to send it a command to get it to reply, it will be almost impossible to guess the right combinations.
If you want to try the Ethernet port, you will need the device's address. Any of the possbile addresses used on the internet could be in there.
Lynn
03-03-2014 03:57 AM - edited 03-03-2014 04:02 AM
Post some pictures 🙂
(and be kind, jpg with ~200k should be fine for the start)
Next: If you connect the USB port you can read the USB ID and search the web for that. 🙂
If you open the device and read the chip IDs and look for the application notes of the vendors you get more information. Re engineering is hacking fun 😄 (If you have the time for it 😉 )
03-03-2014 05:28 PM
As Henirk said:
Re engineering is hacking fun
That alone might be an interesting student project.
Lynn