🧾 Description
This article shares information on host to scanner commands for the RS232 Standard interface for Magellan scanners.
🛠️ Resolution Steps
Host Commands for Configuration
Host Commands for Image Capture
General Host Commands
| Frame ID Character | Contents of Frame |
| M | Primary*** Scanner top model number* |
| S | Primary*** Scanner serial number |
| m | Primary*** Scanner main board serial number |
| A | Primary*** Scanner application ROM ID (e.g. ‘R96-1234’) |
| R | Primary*** Scanner application revision level |
| C | Primary*** Scanner configuration file ID |
| B | Primary*** Scanner boot loader ROM ID |
| H | Primary*** Scanner hardware ID |
| U | Universal interface application ROM ID |
| u | Universal interface bootloader ROM ID |
| W | Internal scale information (if equipped with scale)** |
| D | Remote display version (if equipped with display)** |
| E | Smart EAS version (if equipped with EAS)** |
| I | Primary*** Scanner interface (as per interface config item) |
| r | RF Scanner radio version (H/W) |
| L | Secondary^ (Linked) Scanner application in system, if present |
| b | Secondary^ (Linked) scanner Bootloader in system |
| X | Secondary^ (Linked) handheld scanner model name/number |
| V | VL version |
| v | VSL version |
| F | Scanner FPGA version |
| Q | Scanner SDRAM Configuration version |
| P | Scanner IPE Application |
| l (lower case L) | USB loader version |
"h" requests health information of the scanner. Response information below.
| Frame ID Character | Contents of Frame |
| m | ‘OK’ – motor is working * ‘FAIL’ – motor has failed ‘NA’ – health status not available** |
| h | ‘OK’ – horizontal (or single) laser is working * ‘FAIL’ – horizontal laser has failed ‘NA’ – health status not available |
| v | ‘OK’ – vertical laser is working (if equipped with 2 lasers)* ‘FAIL’ – vertical laser has failed ‘NA’ – health status not available |
| s | ‘OK’ – internal scale is working (if equipped with scale)* ‘FAIL’ – internal scale has failed ‘CAL’ – scale requires calibration ‘NA’ – health status not available |
| d | ‘OK’ – remote display is working (if equipped with display)* ‘FAIL’ – remote display has failed ‘NA’ – health status not available |
| e | ‘OK’ – EAS system is working (if equipped with EAS)* ‘FAIL xxx’ – EAS system has failed, with failure message: • ‘Comm’ - EAS communications failed – OR - • ‘HV Fault’ – EAS high voltage failure – OR - • ‘EEPROM’ – EAS EEPROM has failed ‘NA’ – health status not available |
| c | ‘OK’ – Camera is working* ‘FAIL xxx’ – Camera has failed ‘NA’ – Camera status not available |
| r | “OK”- Radio is working ‘FAIL”- Radio self test failure (could be degraded condition) ‘NA’ –Not available |
| H | ‘OK’ – USB Hand held device connected |
| D | ‘OK’ – USB serial dongle connected |
| 0 | ‘OK’ – IPE 0 working ‘FAIL’ – IPE 0 self-test failure ‘NA’ – IPE 0 not available |
| 1 | ‘OK’ – IPE 1 working ‘FAIL’ – IPE 1 self-test failure ‘NA’ – IPE 1 not available |
| 2 | ‘OK’ – IPE 2 working ‘FAIL’ – IPE 2 self-test failure ‘NA’ – IPE 2 not available |
| 3 | ‘OK’ – IPE 3 working ‘FAIL’ – IPE 3 self-test failure ‘NA’ – IPE 3 not available |
| S | ‘OK’ – Scale Sentry working ‘FAIL’ – Scale Sentry self-test failure |
| Frame ID Character | Contents of Frame |
| P | Scanner power on time in hours |
| m | Motor on time in hours |
| l (small case L) | Laser on time in hours |
| L | Number of labels scanned |
| z | Scale zero attempts (if equipped with scale)* |
| c | Scale calibration attempts (if equipped with scale)* |
| C | Custom Data field (up to 24 ASCII characters)** |
| E | Number of EAS labels deactivated (if equipped with EAS)* |
| e | Number of EAS manual deactivation button presses (if equipped with EAS)* |
| B | Number of battery charge cycles |
| T | Number of trigger pulls |
| K | Number of key presses, 16 slots as described below*** |
| R | Total Resets |
| r | Error Resets |
| V | Vertical IPE forced resets |
| H | Horizontal IPE forced resets |
| D | 2D forced resets |
| Q | TDR forced resets |
| v | Vertical IPE excessive resets |
| h | Horizontal IPE excessive resets |
| d | 2D excessive resets |
| q | TDR excessive resets |
| Z | POS initiated zero requests |
| X | Enforced Zero events |
| S | Number of Scale Sentry detection events |
| Y | Number of EAS runtime faults |
Configurating the scanner through host commands
BEL – format of configuration item is OK but item number is invalid or not understood
Writing configuration commands
"$C<tag item><value><CR>
Response would be
ACK - configuration write operation was successful
NAK - an invalid configuration item number was or a data value that is out of range
BEL - a configuration item that is properly formatted but does not exist
CAN - a malformed command string
Commit current configuration to user configuration command
The commit current configuration to user configuration message format is as follows:
<$><A><s><CR>
Where:
<$> is the ‘$’ character (0x24)
<A> is the ‘A’ character (0x43)
<s> is the ‘s’ character (0x73)
The responses to this command are:
ACK – operation successful
BEL – operation failed
Image Capture
Image capture command syntax:
P<cnt>pSBCIF
where:
P - ASCII 'P' used as preamble of pass-thu commands
<cnt> - binary value of 6 indicating 6 bytes to follow (this is actually the ACK character \x06 or P\x06pSBCIF would be the full command unmodified in comtest serial)
p - ASCII lowercase 'p' ; command to take a picture
S - size value of image as ASCII character
‘S’ == uses scanner's configuration value CI_IMAGE_SIZE
‘0’-VGA, (VGA 640X480)
‘1’-WVGA, (Wide VGA 752X480)
‘2’-FVGA, (full 1024X1280 VGA)
‘3’-HVGA (half vga)
B - brightness value in ASCII
‘B’ == uses scanner's configuration value CI_IMAGE_BRIGHTNESS else ‘0’ thru’9’ specifies brightness
C - contrast value in ASCII
‘C’ == uses scanner configuration value CI_IMAGE_CONTRAST else ‘0’ thru’9’ specifies contrast
I - imager selection
'V' = vertical
'T' = tdr
'H' = horizontal
'E' = ecomm reader
F - format of image
'J' = jpeg
'M' = bmp (bitmap)
'T' = tiff
'B' = binary
Response:
The scanner will respond with one of the following characters:
BEL (0x07) – picture taking not supported or format of command is incorrect
ACK (0x06) – request is honored, picture taking is started. Some time after the ACK is transmitted; the scanner will transmit a 4 byte binary value representing the number of bytes in the image to follow. This number is of Big Endian byte order. If "number of bytes to follow" value is zero, there was a problem with generating the image (typically jpeg) and the request should be retried.