QR-Scanner wireless

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1

Hello community,

i have a request for connecting an QR-Code Scanner to a B&R-PLC (PPC2200)
In the past it was done per USB-Cable, now it should be done wireless.
My first mind was to install an accesspoint to the Ethernetinterface (Have done this in the past for maintenance wia WLAN form my laptop) and it worked well.
Is this a possibility to integrate an WLAN-Scanner as well?
Any other experience or better solutions?

regards Michael

2

Hi,

we’re talking about AR embedded (no Hypervisor, no GPOS), right?

To put in my “two cents” to your question:
from AR development and feature point of view, it makes no difference if a network is directly connected with a cable or if there’s a access point behind the ETH interface.

To get it handled in a acceptable way (from the software developers perspective), the scanner should support best-case a well-known, “PLC friendly”, protocol like ModbusTCP or comparable, or at least some kind of ASCII-based protocol that can be implemented using TCP or UDP as transport protocol.

If using an WLAN access point, some additional things should get attention:

  • can the access point act as a bridge, or is it / has it to be a router? A bridge could be nice because of less configuration of the access point itself, but it’s not mandatory and will work also with routing (may routing is even the better choice in direction of cyber security, but this is a different topic)
  • error handling could be a bit more difficult, because if there’s a communication break, there more then one device are in the chain (could be the cabling, or the router/bridge, or the QR device …), but nothing that can’t be solved
  • response times could be / will be slower, but I think that’s clear when using WLAN :wink:

I personally would prefer a ethernet cable between the scanner and the PLC, but in the end, I think it depends on the communication protocols of the QR-Code Scanner - if there’s some TCP/UDP - IP based communication possible and the protocol is documented, it should be possible to communicate also via a WLAN access point with the device.

Best regards!