multi drop bus

[RoboPOS]

RE: MDB/ICP - Multi Drop Bus Internal Communication Protocol - the communications standard for point of sales devices (bill acceptor, coin mech, credit card readers, etc).  This is a serial coms, 9600 baud, master-slave setup.  1 start bit, 8 data bits, 1 mode bit, 1 stop bit.  I'm wondering if LabView could be used to create a software converter for USB-MDB? 

[Richard_Smith]

It seems to be hard solution to use LabVIEW for this kind of drivers, if you want to build a MDB to USB converter there are lots of devices in the market.

http://coinco-europe.com/coin/leaflets/USBMDB_CAE_En_017.pdf
http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/100572891/MDB_To_USB_Converter.html

Otherwise, you will need to, not only write your driver, but also buy a DAQ for acquiring your data into LabVIEW and use something else in order to send that data over the USB.

If you still want to write your own driver you will need to use text base programming, and you can use the VISA library from NI.

[RoboPOS]

Thanks.  Yes there are about 5 different usb to mdb converters out there. Three are in beta test, ones released, and one is essentually unsupported as the only help is chinese instructions translated for results that are the bestest.  Also, the main players like CoinCo and MEI have not made devices to the NAMA standard but keyed to their own product brand. 

I did LabView a lot a decade ago and found the serial comms blocks to be quite easy to use.  Not sure about the DAQ need you mentioned.  MDB commands and replies boil down to ACK/NAK.  I was thinking take the PC serial comms, and use LabView to add in the extra bits and handle them.