Hi all,
Working on a proposal for a customer that will require printing some QR codes. The idea is, the customer weighs product into a bin, and then prints a label to put on it. That label is later scanned, and the information retrieved. I'm looking at datamax printers and datalogic scanners, simply for ease of integration and local support, but open to suggestion there as well.
The information that needs to be retrieved from the label is:
- Product code (5 digit code)
- Weight
- Batch code
All of this data will be available in my Control Logix, so I figure what I'll do is assemble a string something like:
PC12345WT6789BC54321
Which would mean product code 12345, weight 6789g, and batch code 54321.
I would then encode that string into a QR code, and have a label printed.
How I'd really like this to work is to just send that string over ethernet to a label printer and have it spit out a QR code with that string encoded into it. Nice and clean, no extra computers, the smallest possible amount of things to go wrong. However, I think it might be a little bit optimistic to believe it can actually be done that easily.
So, I'm after ideas as to how I can get this done as simply and cleanly as possible. I'm open to completely different suggestions as well if you think there is another tree I should be barking up!
tl;dr - what's the simplest, cleanest way you can think of to get a string from a control logix PLC encoded into a QR code and printed on a sticky label?
Working on a proposal for a customer that will require printing some QR codes. The idea is, the customer weighs product into a bin, and then prints a label to put on it. That label is later scanned, and the information retrieved. I'm looking at datamax printers and datalogic scanners, simply for ease of integration and local support, but open to suggestion there as well.
The information that needs to be retrieved from the label is:
- Product code (5 digit code)
- Weight
- Batch code
All of this data will be available in my Control Logix, so I figure what I'll do is assemble a string something like:
PC12345WT6789BC54321
Which would mean product code 12345, weight 6789g, and batch code 54321.
I would then encode that string into a QR code, and have a label printed.
How I'd really like this to work is to just send that string over ethernet to a label printer and have it spit out a QR code with that string encoded into it. Nice and clean, no extra computers, the smallest possible amount of things to go wrong. However, I think it might be a little bit optimistic to believe it can actually be done that easily.
So, I'm after ideas as to how I can get this done as simply and cleanly as possible. I'm open to completely different suggestions as well if you think there is another tree I should be barking up!
tl;dr - what's the simplest, cleanest way you can think of to get a string from a control logix PLC encoded into a QR code and printed on a sticky label?