Starting program upon scan with LS2208

[rekcut01]

Hello everyone,

Is there a way to start a program on the scan event? for example, I thought the <prefix><data><suffix> would work but I can't find any documentation or examples. What I have is a perl program that opens an excel spread sheet and scans a certain column until it finds the barcode number that was just scanned. jumps over to the next column and puts a time associated with that scan. So what I'm wanting to do is:

perl myprogram.pl [my recent scan] (passing my recent scan to my calling program.)
I was trying to do that in the <prefix><data><suffix> fashion.

Can this be done? or am I just chasing a dream?? I have a loop that runs but people take the command window out of focus and the scanner doesn't scan to anything. I want to take that option away.

Thanks for any help in advance.

Rick

 

[JRB-Bldr]

In general Scanning a Barcode with a Scanner is a relatively 'passive' asynchronous event.

An 'external' application can 'trigger' a Scan because the scanner itself has the ability to receive commands, but a Scan cannot 'trigger' the launch of an application which is not running.

I thought the <prefix><data><suffix> would work

That 'tells' the workstation that data is available, but the workstation OS, by itself, has no idea what to do with it. It takes a running application 'looking' for the data to make something happen.

However, you should be able to create a workstation Service which is running in the background (look in your task manager at all the others running) which is 'looking' for Scan data which could react to the receipt of data.

Another way would be to change your existing program to not allow it to loose focus. That might inhibit the users from getting other work done and therefore not be a valid option, but it is a possibility.

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr