Hardware devices

Need to print bar code and RFID smart labels based on the data received by some hardware device? Weight scales and bar code scanners are frequently the source of data for label printing.

NiceLabel' middleware integration server NiceWatch has built-in a technology to communicate with the external devices connected to the computer's serial port (COM). This communication technology makes it easy to exchange data with the hardware devices and trigger label printing with the received data.

Whenever the hardware device is responsible for providing the data for the labels, you can easily hook it up to the serial port, accept the data, evaluate the data and print out the labels.

Usually the received data cannot be immediately used on the labels. Frequently you need to:

  • extract certain fields from the data stream, or
  • use part of the received data as the lookup key to access the rest of the values from the database, or
  • decide when to print the labels and when not (based on the incoming data), or
  • make internal calculations with the received data, or
  • communicate with the device bidirectionally, or
  • store the received values in a database for further processing

All of the above (and much more) is easily accessible and set up fast with the NiceWatch, the middleware integration module. Absolutely no programming skills are required to define the automatic printing solutions with NiceWatch. You can use the simple drag & drop method to define the required actions that should execute when data is received.

However, for advanced data manipulation and decision making the skills in Visual Basic scripting are helpful. The target audiences for NiceWatch are primarily non-programmers who need to print labels based on the data from the hardware devices accepted on the serial port. To master the application some additional knowledge of system administration and scripting is welcome.