TTY port

[Fernando Muñoz]

Hi

is it possible to send data to the port /dev/ttyMT2 in MIT App inventor?

Many thanks

[Chris Ward]

Hi Fernando

Is that Port a physical port or virtual? What is it in relation to? How is it connected?

Jean-Rodolphe Letertre created a TCP Extension, that might be of use:

See my website to download:

https://www.professorcad.co.uk/appinventortips#TipsTCP

[Fernando Muñoz]

Hi Chris,

thanks for your answer. It is a physical port, it is a printer in a android terminal.

[Chris Ward]

OK - depending on your Android version, the Android Device (phone) should offer a print function, via a printer plugin if necessary.

Are you trying to send media (text/images) for printing or ?

Are you connecting to the printer via USB cable or ?

[Fernando Muñoz]

Hi Chris

printer is intergarted into de terminal, in the printer doc we have to send text to /dev/ttyMT2 device. Teh terminal is the MG-9300 of uwinscan.

If i can to send image it would be great too

[Chris Ward]

Hi

Can you post a link to it on the Manufacturer's website?

[Fernando Muñoz]

Hi

i can't do it, i can't to write the link

uwinscan com

[Chris Ward]

Hi Fernando

This one?

MG-U9300 print integrated smart handheld terminal

1. ARM Cortex-A53 64-bit quad-core processor (1.3GHz);
2. Android7.0 operating system;
3. 16GB eMMC/2GB DDR3;
4. 5.0-inch IPS color display with a resolution of 720×1280;
5. 3.7V, 4800mAh battery;
6. 1D/2D barcode scanning, 58mm thermal printing, fingerprint reader;
7. WIFI, BT4.0, NFC

[Chris Ward]

Hi Fernando

The manufacturer is Shanghai Basewin Technology.

I don't fancy our chances of printing via the tty port - this is supported via the uwinscan SDK (Software Development Kit) and generally that can only be incorporated into text-based code. That said, it should therefore be possible to write an App Inventor extension and sample code for a demo App is provided.

uwinscan supply a ready-to go-tty demo App  - have you tried it?

Incase there is another way, I have asked the supplier via email. Awaiting their response.

[ABG]

The site has no software documentation on the device.

Here's an easy experiment to try with the device, if you have one,

based on the idea that Android is descended from unix and

unix devices respond to file names and file operations .

Pull in a File component, and write this text to file

'/dev/ttyMT2' : 'Hello World\r\n'

and see if it prints anything.

I give it only a 1 in 4 chance of working, but it's an easy test.

ABG

[Chris Ward]

....perhaps we could do something via Activity Starter?

[Chris Ward]

Hi Fernando

in the printer doc we have to send text to /dev/ttyMT2 device

Is that document a PDF or similar? Can you attach it to your forum post?

 

[ABG]

Here's another idea for how to send text to /dev/ttyMT2 ...

Use one of the shell extensions for AI2, and issue a command

to copy text via the shell, using either the cat command or the echo command...

echo 'Hello World\r\n' >> /dev/ttyMT2

or

cat MyText.txt >>  /dev/ttyMT2

ABG

[Fernando Muñoz]

Hi

here the printer document i have

Thanks

[Fernando Muñoz]

Hi

Chris activity starter doesn' work

uppsss

[Fernando Muñoz]

Hi ABG

with terminal extension it doesn't work

[ABG]

Your development guide pdf is for Java programmers.

For help developing an AI2 extension, see the

Extensions section of FAQ

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mitappinventortest/wqJin0qO8M0/8xUafdROAgAJ

and also see the Open Source forum in the Forums section

of that FAQ.

ABG

[ABG]

Here's another lazy idea to try ...

There's a Sharing component in AI2 you can use to pass

a text file to another app, like maybe a dedicated printer app

if you are lucky.

You would write a little text file from your app,

then share it with the printer app.

I haven't used that yet, and I am not sure if Android 

can link file name suffixes like .prn or .txt to specific apps

to make this choice automatic.

ABG

[Chris Ward]

@ ABG, Fernando. The sharing of files has a file path issue unfortunately. MIT is aware. Not impossible to use it as-is, but close to impossible.

[Chris Ward]

Hi Fernando

For the Activity Starter - what did you try? If you build it as an APK and install on the device, if it fails we should at least get a useful error message.