Bar Codes -- Blaster Advantage Printer

Installation :

The 'Blaster Advantage User's Guide' provided with the printer gives information on installing the bar code printer and configuring the communications port.

Label Design:

Labels are designed in a text editor such as Notepad that does not write formatting characters to file. A description of the programming language used to write design files, called Label Formats, can be found in 'proggde.hlp' on the diskette distributed with the printer. Label Format files are simply a list of ASCII commands. These files can be printed on the Blaster Advantage from the Command prompt using the the copy command (i.e. C:\ copy mybarcode.txt com2). Walter Reed uses two label formats:

• bcbottle.txt: is used to label new samples being registered into the CIS.

  ! 0 100 190 1 
  PITCH 100
  BARCODE_FONT 12x16
  BARCODE CODE39 20 30 30 BK45687
  STRING 9X12(1,1,1,1) 20 70 13 Aug 98
  END
  

• bcship.txt: is used to label samples for shipments to test systems.

  ! 0 100 190 1 
  PITCH 100
  R270 8x8(1,1,1,1) 155 80 13 Aug 98
  R270 9x12(1,1,1,1) 135 80 WH
  BARCODE_FONT 12x16
  BARCODE CODE39 0 20 20 BK45687
  BARCODE_FONT 8x8(00,-30,1,1,1,1)
  BARCODE CODE39 0 85 20 123.4 MG
  END
  

To print a Label Format from a GUI application it must be rewritten as a TRIM trigger. Each line of the Label Format is written into a list and the variables are replaced with field names. The bar code triggers shown below were associated with Action Buttons and run when the button is pressed.

• bcbottle trigger:
The code for this trigger follows. Note that the first line of the barcode list is used to configure the serial port using the 'mode' system command with the communication parameters '9600,n,8,1" . Also note that the values 'BK45687' and '13 Aug 98' have been replaced with the field variables 'p.bn' (= sample number) and 'p.recd' (=date received) from the Accession Sample Application. This code is run and the bar code printed by pushing the [BarCode] action button on the Accession Sample Application.

{
list barcode;
list_mod(barcode,1,"mode com1:9600,n,8,1");
list_mod(barcode,1,"! 0 100 190 1");
list_mod(barcode,1,"PITCH 100");
list_mod(barcode,1,"BARCODE_FONT 12x16");
list_mod(barcode,1,"BARCODE CODE39 20 30 30 "^^p.bn);
list_mod(barcode,1,"STRING 9X12(1,1,1,1) 20 70 "^^p.recd);
list_mod(barcode,1,"END");

list_file(barcode,G.cache_dir^^"bcbottle.txt","a");
file_copy(G.cache_dir^^"bcbottle.txt","com1" );
barcode= NULL;
}

• bcship trigger:
The code for this trigger follows. Note that the variables '13 Aug 98', 'WH', 'BK45687', '123.4' and 'MG' have been replaced with the field variables 'p.shipdate', 'p.test', 'p.bn', 'p.ship_qty' and 'p.unit'. This code is run and the bar code printed by pushing the [BarCode] action button on the Ship Sample Application.

{
list barcode;

list_mod(barcode,1,"mode com1:9600,n,8,1");
list_mod(barcode,1,"! 0 100 190 1");
list_mod(barcode,1,"PITCH 100");
list_mod(barcode,1,"R270 8x8(1,1,1,1) 155 80 "^^p.shipdate);
list_mod(barcode,1,"R270 9x12(1,1,1,1) 135 80 "^^p.test);
list_mod(barcode,1,"BARCODE_FONT 12x16");
list_mod(barcode,1,"BARCODE CODE39 0 20 20 "^^p.bn);
list_mod(barcode,1,"BARCODE_FONT 8x8(00,-30,1,1,1,1) ");
list_mod(barcode,1,"BARCODE CODE39 0 85 20 "^^p.ship_qty^^" "^^p.unit);
list_mod(barcode,1,"END");

list_file(barcode,G.cache_dir^^"bcship.txt","a");
file_copy(G.cache_dir^^"bcship.txt","com1" );
barcode= NULL;
}