Welcome to EpoS Wizard!
I've been pulling my hair out for hours today trying to get a second hand Symbol LS2208 scanner working with my XE-A307. I picked it up on ebay on a punt for £16. Took a bit of a educated gamble whether the till serial port would be powered or not (seems to power the Metrologic ones which have the same 135mW current draw). The scanner seems to work ok, as in it powers up and I can scan configuration barcodes to my hearts content to set defaults, beep volmes, RS232 mode, data rate etc, but can I get this bleeding till to receive any data, no?! 🙁
I've got the scanner set up in pretty much the default config: 9600, no parity, 8 bit, 1 stop etc.. no hardware or software handshaking and the till settings are matched obviously but still nothing. I've tried MANY combinations of port type, handshaking on RTS/CTS, speeds, check for errors on, check for errors off... the scanner documentation is extremely thorough, the tills is not.
Would someone please be able to put me out of my misery? There is one option in particular on the till which is bugging me as I cannot find any documentation for it anywhere so can't tell if it's significant. I can see what the options are but I can find no explanation anywhere which might allow me to relate their meanings to one of the scanner options:
PGM Mode->Setting->Device Config->Scanner->Type - RS-CD or RS-CS control
The closest I can get is with the till in standby mode, I can scan a barcode and it will wake up but no data is received. If i continue to scan codes a further error beep sounds as though someone is tapping an invalid key, like [CL]
Time for vodka me thinks...
Sharp/scanner conversion cable
4800, 7, 1, odd
You need a stx prefix and a line feed suffix.
Enable RTS/CTS handshaking depending on how your cable is made.
Setup the RS port on the register.
Enjoy
I've never tried it on a 307, but on the bigger machines I always use a power supply with the scanner. There is 5 volts at the RS232, but it can't supply enough current to run the scanner reliably.
Cheers for the replies peeps, not managed to get back to messing with it until but and still not having any success. I don't think power is the issue as the scanner powers up fine and can scan config barcodes without any problems at all.
I've tried configuring using 123scan to produce the config barcodes, including the following rule:
1. Send Ascii 2 (stx)
2. Send everything else
3. Send ascii 13 (cr/lf)
RS232 configured as 4800, 7, odd, 1
I've tried hardware handshaking on and off, but not tried the CTS/RTS options 1, 2 or 3
Still nothing, other than the odd error beep from the till (which is something I admit)
The only thing left is the cable, but before I fork out for something else i'd love to know what the pinout is if possible. Does anyone have one and have that info please?
Also, might pay a trip to CPC to see if I can get a USB to serial converter and try and get it working on a PC...
Data pins straight through and spoof handshaking on both ends
