Cognex 3400 and SLC 5/05

I am currently specing a project. I have been give some guidelines from the customer and I am wondering if this is even possible. Currently a Cognex 3400 and SLC 5/05 are specified. I will be receiving a string (a serial number with both letters and numbers) via another SLC 5/05 over ethernet. I am to use the Cognex 3400 to verify the string I have received vs. the string I will receive from the camera. They want to communicate from the Cognex to the SLC 5/05 over ethernet. My question is will I be able to get this string via ethernet or will this have to be done serially? If this is possible please put me on the right track of how to do this. I am asking this because it seems all ASCII instructions are set up to read only from the serial port.

First off I don't know AB at all, so I have no idea whether the SLC 5/05 even has an Ethernet Port.

On the assumption that it has, then the rest is no problem. We use Cognex cameras, amongst other things, to read data matrix codes with serial numbers and the like. Communication with the camera is always as a String of ASCII characters. in both directions. The older S/W "Native Mode", (which is still available, presumably for compatability purposes) was a bit messy, but the newer S/W is much easier.

I'm not entirely clear from your post whether your just worrying about the data transfer situation, or whether you're also planning to use the onboard OCR to directly read a printed serial number. While Data Matrix and Barcode recognition works very well, I've read quite a few reports that the OCR is very fussy and difficult to set up. Please note - I've never used the OCR facility myself, so this is purely hearsay!

You'll find quite a lot of useful info at MrPLC.com

I am planning on using the OCV function to compare a serial number. The good thing is this is an extremely slow process. Speed is not necessary. If I need to hold the part in front of the camera for a few seconds is not a problem.