NewMagellan is written in C# .NET. All traces of winforms have been stripped out for the sake of mono compatibility. It doesn't require Visual Studio on Windows; the .NET 2 SDK includes a command line that's sufficient. Both a makefile for linux and a batch file for compiling on windows included.

How it works

Magellan reads ports.conf to see what drivers to use. Entries are just a port (COM1, /dev/Stty1, etc) and a driver name (e.g., SPH_Magellan_Scale). You can have more than one driver running - say a scanner/scale and a signature capture device.

Each driver is launched in its own thread. Other than implementing the SerialPortHandler class, there's no hard and fast requirements what a driver actually has to do. Reading from the relevant serial port would probably be the most common. Writing to the file system is the easiest way I've found to pass info to IS4C (similar to what ssd does).

After starting all the drivers, Magellan launches one more thread with a simple UDP server. All it does is listen (port 9450 by default) and pass any received messages to each driver. This way IS4C can send commands to devices directly without intermediary files.

The current version accepts command line input of messages, too. Re an init script to background the process see Installing NewMagellan Scanner/Scale Driver The windows version compiles a second executable that can be registered as a windows service.

Win32 service notes: the port/driver configuration is hard-coded into the executable, so you have to recompile to make changes (alternately you could hard-code the path to ports.conf, but that would mean a recompile too). The .NET SDK includes a utility called installutil.exe. To install, run installutil.exe posSVC.exe. To remove, run installutil.exe /u posSVC.exe. Installation prompts for a username and password. The username has to include the machine name (e.g., POS1\is4c_user) to work. It took me awhile to figure that out.

Currently Supported Input Messages

• errorBeep [scale] issue three beeps
• beepTwice [scale] issue two beeps
• goodBeep [scale] issue one beeps
• twoPairs [scale] issue four beeps with a pause between the second and third
• rePoll [scale] re-request weight
• termReset [cc] reset terminal to its start transaction state
• termReboot [cc] reboot terminal hardware
• termManual [cc] display manual card entry screen
• termApproved [cc] display approval screen
• termGetType [cc] display card type selection screen
• termGetTypeWithFS [cc] display card type selection screen including foodstamp option
• termCashBack [cc] display cash backselection screen
• termGetPin [cc] display PIN entry screen
• termWait [cc] display wait-for-cashier screen
• termSig[suffix] [cc] do signature capture. The suffix is an optional message to display on the screen (do not include the square brackets)

Currently Supported Output Messages

• [numeric value] [scale] UPC/EAN data
• GS1~[numeric value] [scale] GS1 barcode data
• S11[four digit weight [scale] current weight
• S141 [scale] not settled on a weight yet
• S142 [scale] error condition
• S143 [scale] weight is zero
• S145 [scale] weight is below zero (error condition as well)
• TERMCLEARALL [cc] term has reset to start transaction state. Clear any pending POS-side data
• TERM:[type] [cc] card type selection. [type] will be Credit, Debit, EbtFood, EbtCash, or Gift.
• TERMCB:[amount] [cc] cash back amount selection.
• PINCACHE:[entryped data] [cc] entryped PIN block
• PANCACHE:[entryped data] [cc] entryped card data (magstripe) block
• TERMBMP[filename] [cc] signature data available. The file should be located in ss-output/tmp/.