usb printer

[MikeBowen]

Hello all,

I am looking for a repair ticket printer that I can access through Labview.  I would like to address it as a windows printer.  I was able to write a driver that made use of the report writer, but when it compiled for use through the runtime engine I ran into the dirty dot (unsaved changes) and was not able to find the source of the VI that was causing the problem.  I rewrote the driver to save to a file (and hence not use the report writer) and the problem went away. 

This morning I spent 2 hours looking for a receipt printer that comes with labview drivers, and the people I talked to pointed me at NI.  I browsed through their driver catalog and nothing with the manufacturers I have found showed up (Star, Epson, Brother).  Anyone have any suggestions?

At my wit's end,

Mike

[Dennis_Knutson]

NI does not write windows drivers for printers. Generally, if you have a printer and it comes with a windows driver, LabVIEW can access it.

[MikeBowen]

Okay, now for the next question.  How would Labview acces it through windows?  I found VIs that print wiring diagrams and module documentation, but not a text string.

Mike

[Dennis_Knutson]

There are options on the Report Generation palette to add controls/indicators to the report.

[MikeBowen]

My original solution was to drop the report writer in my instrument driver.  The problem I ran into is when the application that runs it (IVVIVI) runs it with the runtime engine the dirty dot of death showed up (unsaved changes).  If I took the report writer modules out the dirty dot went away.  I even downloaded a labview app that searched the VIs in a given folder to set the "Separate compiled code from source file" property as desired.  I found and corrected a number but the problem still prevails.  I think a couple NI VIs were under password protection, so I could not change them.  Don't recall if these needed to be changed.

Any suggestions on how to find the source of the dirty dot?

[Dennis_Knutson]

I'm not sure what the 'dirty dot' problem is. If you don't want to use the report generation toolkit, you can pass controls/indicators to a subVI. For VI Properties, there are print options including to automatically print front panel.

[MikeBowen]

I don't want to print the VI.  I want to print a series of text strings, each string being one line.    The dirty dot means I have unsaved changes, because one of the VIs being used is configured to "Separate compiled code from source file."

[Dennis_Knutson]

You want to print string controls on a VI. I just described a way to do that without using the report generation toolkit.

[MikeBowen]

I'm not following you.  Was that in another thread?

[Dennis_Knutson]

What I should have said is that you CAN print string controls. If you don't want to use the report generation toolkit, as I said, you can pass the string to a subVI that is set to print when finished.