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I am building an online POS and trying to establish low level communication with an Epson tm-t88iv thermal printer. there is no direct printing of files, only hexadecimals or ascii can be sent to the hardware in a specific format for it to print. all of this done in a linux enviroment (both ubuntu 13.10 and 12.04).

Now the problem is that I can't establish communication with the printer. I have tried using Jzebra and other java to javascript libraries but with no luck, so I changed to a more familiar environment and tried using the php serial class with a status check code but nothing happens.

include 'src/PhpSerial.php';

// Let's start the class
$serial = new PhpSerial;

$serial->deviceSet("/dev/ttyUSB0");
$serial->confBaudRate(38400);
$serial->confParity("none");
$serial->confCharacterLength(8);
$serial->confStopBits(1);
$serial->confFlowControl("none");

$serial->deviceOpen();

$serial->sendMessage("\x02\x81\x1B\x02\x01\x03\x5C\x5C");

$read = $serial->readPort();

var_dump($read);

which returns an empty string. Also the printer is not receiving the hexadecimals (it is set on a hex-dump state, to print every hex it receives).

I am not sure even if its a coding or hardware problem. I tried installing cutecom to talk with serial port but I don't get any answers either. I also tried doing some stty commands directly from shell but got nothing either.

If someone can please shed a light on why this is happening or if he has any similar experience, it would be great.

thanks!

p.d: i am connecting using a prolific pl2303 serial to usb cable and its correctly installed as far as i am aware.

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  • It sounds like your problem is not with javascript, java, or PHP (yet..). If you can't communicate with the printer using a serial terminal program (ie minicom or cutecom), then you won't be able to use higher-level tools either. Similar set up here might help: stackoverflow.com/questions/5347962/… Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 13:38
  • Did you try with 'echo DATA > /dev/ttyUSB0'? Did it reach the printer? Put debugging statements, check for errors, propagate them. Commented Mar 13, 2014 at 13:33
  • Thanks for the help, I solved it by changing the chmod on /dev/ttyUSB0 and also I had an issue with the hexadecimal code I was sending. In the end it was a bit of both programming and setting. Commented Mar 13, 2014 at 22:07
  • Possible duplicate of PHP serial port data return from Arduino, php read data from serial port on linux, php serial communication in linux, etc. Commented Jul 2, 2019 at 2:21
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