xMII and RS-232 communication

[Former Member]

As most of us are aware xMII does not support RS-232 communication. Recently some customers have come up with requirements of interfacing weigh scales to SAP.

Most of these weigh scales have only the RS-232 interfacing option. (I am not sure if these could be OPC compliant as well.. Some higher and expensive ones come with a software version which I guess can be configured to write a file or some come even with a Database Option.)

With xMII 12 would it be possible, lets say, to write a custom action 'RS-232 Listner' which could allow this to happen?

What are SAP's thoughts on this?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yes, this is a common request. I think in part because sometimes customers get the impression that xMII can do this from the "sales force" and can do it "easily".

We had some luck with this in the past.

Sometimes what we have seen in the past, is that the rs-232 devices have a transmit or send button that sends a signal back to a pc that the device is attached to. If you use an application like WinWedge that takes the signal from the device and decodes it to text, it can be used to get the information. WinWedge typically comes with handheld USB or Serial barcode scanners. It's main purpose is to take the signal from the device and "pop" it into the active window's cursor location. So if you scan a barcode with Word open and active, the barcode scanner sends the signal to WinWedge on the PC, WinWedge translates the signal to text and throws in at the cursor location.

If your cursor is in an HTML form input box, and you can capture the data as descibed above, now you can use the data via Javascript and pass it to an applet on the page.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Ryan

Thanks for sharing the info.

Meanwhile I ran into this on the Kepware portal.

Check this out and let me know what you think.

http://www.kepware.com/UCON_Protocol_Server_Brochure.pdf

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I am somewhat familiar with Kepware. The term is thrown around a lot (very loosely) during discussions of xMII connectivity to serial devices.

I don't have any concept of the cost associated with this solution; I can't imagine it is more economical than a WinWedge type solution, but WinWedge may not work for every application.

[Former Member]

I've used Kepware in the past and it is a good solution. We used to test with Kepware back in the Lighthammer days. The other issue may be - while it is very obvious to us - the scales need to be on the network. I saw one company that wanted to do this but most of their scales were not on the network. They needed to install lots of network drops.

Joe Montagna

[Former Member]

I recommend Kepware's solution. Many customers have had very good luck with using this for weigh scale, RFID and barcode readers, and other RS-232 devices.

Rick