I have an application where I will need to print barcodes from labVIEW to a Zebra S4M industrail barcode printer. Has anyone had any experience with these?
I don't have experience with that specifically, but if your printer can be set up like a standard printer as far as Windows is concerned (for example), then I think you'll be able to print to it from LabVIEW. What we know for sure is that you can print from LabVIEW. Is the problem that you aren't able to add that printer as a default printer, or expose it to the same machine as you have LabVIEW running?
I can print regular text to printers with no problem. I haven't tried sending anything to this printer yet as I don't have it. I will pick it up tomorrow. However I was wondering if anyone has any experience printing barcodes to printers from LabVIEW.
I have used Brother barcode printers with Labview. They offered a free COM object library. I believe that Zebra has an ActiveX library, but you must purchase it.
I've got a Zebra and what I did was just create a text file that embedded all of the control codes around the text and bar codes I needed to print. After the text file is written, I use system exec to copy the text file to lpt1.
Thats sounds simple, but I'm not sure of what codes to embed. Could I contact you directly for some help or would it be best to have the company purchase the ActiveX control?
Thanks,
Doug
Message Edited by hdferguson3 on 07-17-200611:14 AM
There is no ActiveX control. There are control codes that begin with the character ^ and these tell the printer which bar code font to use, the size, etc. I no longer have the programming manual installed but you should be able to view it on the distribution CD download it from Zebra at http://www.zebra.com/id/zebra/na/en/index/drivers_downloads.html. I think it was the ZPL II programming guide.
