AU2016100189A4 - Peripheral Manager for Cloud/Web-based POS Applications - Google Patents

Abstract

The point-of sales (POS) solution that provide easy access to various peripherals by creating a Peripheral Manager on an embedded system to hold the drivers of peripheral device and writing translation layers of commands to communicate over Internet Protocol (Wi-Fi) with Peripheral Service Manager Application running on Android, iOS or window based tablet computer. In addition, interface the Service Manager with Cloud based/Web based POS application by providing a set of API/SDK on the inter-application communication. The peripheral devices typically include thermal receipt printers, barcode scanners, cash box, Pinpad, etc.

Description

DESCRIPTION The invention relate to provide point-of sales (POS) solution that provide easy access to various peripherals by creating a Peripheral Manager on an embedded system to hold the drivers of peripheral device and writing translation layers of commands to communicate over Internet Protocol (Wi-Fi) with Service Manager Application running on iOS, Android and Windows based tablet computer. In addition interface the Service Manager with Cloud based/Web-based Point-of-Sales (POS) application by providing a set of API/SDK on the inter-application communication. The peripheral devices typically include thermal receipt printers, barcode scanners, cash box, Pinpad, etc. TECHNICAL FIELD This disclosure relates to architect of a Peripheral Manager and the architect of a Service Manager. The communication between the peripheral devices and the Peripheral Manager, communication between the Peripheral Manager and the Service Manager (Service Manager is an application running on iOS, Android or Windows based tablet computer). In addition it includes the communication and exchange of commands between the Service manager and a 3 rd party POS application running on the same platform/tablet computer. A set of API/SDK for inter-app communication of the Service Manager and 3rd party POS application is provided. rd Once the set of API/SDK of the Service Manager is adapted by a 3 party POS application, it can run the peripheral connected by wire or wireless to the Peripheral Manager Box. BACKGROUND Typical Point of Sales system runs on a local computer of Window or Linux based operating system. The peripheral are connected to the local computer using the drivers provided by the supplier of the peripherals such a thermal printer, scanner or other devices. 1 In case of Cloud based POS systems that run on iOS, Android or Windows based tablet computer, it poses a challenge to connect the peripheral to the tablet computer due to the fact that a) tablet computers don't support direct ports for externally connected peripherals such as thermal printer and b) Peripheral devices normally do not come with Android or iOS drivers and c) many peripheral do not support Wi-Fi connection and if they do they are more expensive than the one with standard USB or RS-232 interface. In a Cloud based or Web-based POS application, the application provider selects a few thermal printers, barcode scanner and write interfacing software program for these particular devices into their applications. Those selected peripheral devices can communicate either through the web or through the Wi-Fi/LAN network. Hence the selected devices needs to be Wi-Fi enabled and/or carry a LAN port. Such devices are more expensive than the others those can be connected to a POS system simply with a USB or RS-232 interface. Hence each 3rd party POS application provider will qualify a few expensive peripheral devices to be used with their POS application on a tablet computer. Therefore the choice is limited and the choice for the peripheral is only among a particular expensive range. SUMMARY As noted above, all the existing cloud based application comes with a limited choice of expensive peripherals such as thermal printer. These printers and scanner etc. need to be network enabled. This issue of limited use of expansive peripheral devices connectivity with the cloud based system can be addressed by having a stand-alone Peripheral Manager and a Peripheral Service Manager application The Peripheral Manager is hosted on an ARM based micro-controller unit. The electronic circuitry provides platform for Linux based drivers for the peripheral devices. The programs are developed in different layers in the Peripheral Manager to include CUPS (Common Unix Printing System), hosting various drivers and creating common drivers, 2 ESC/POS commands and a final layer of HTTP/Web based commands for communication with the Service Manager Application. Peripheral Service Manager is easily configurable to connect to the Peripheral Manager using an appropriate IP address and authentication mechanism and is sticky service which attempts to auto start on start-up/crash. The Peripheral Manager box offers connectivity of peripheral using interfaces such as USB, Ethernet and RS-232 (the ports configuration is explained later in ore details in the drawings). The peripheral manager supports multiple thermal printers including Kitchen printers and in addition cash box, pin pad and scanner for simultaneous operations. The Peripheral Manager is easy to install and is remotely accessible for configuration through SSH using appropriate authentication mechanism. The Peripheral Manager Box is equipped with 3-4 USB powered USB ports (1A/2A) that can be used to power the USB peripheral such as scanner, Pinpad and other input and reader devices. In addition it provides 24V DC output for powering at least on thermal receipt printer. This box is powered by a 24V AC/DC power adapter. It makes it a standalone box that makes the peripheral communicate with the POS apps ad the same time provides the power requirement to most of the peripherals in a typical POS environment. The Peripheral Manager Box can be synched to multiple tablet computers running the same POS application including the mobile phones. That enables multiple devices to send print and other commands at the same time to Single Peripheral Manager Box. The Peripheral Manager is expandable to include more and more devices and adding additional drivers or modifying common drivers and adding patches in different layer or the architect. Once a new peripheral device is added the updates can be loaded automatically once the system is on line. 3 An application named as Service Manager is created in 3 different platforms (iOS, Android and Windows) which in turns exchange command with the Peripheral Manager mostly over IP (Wi Fi). A set of instructions are written in the Service Manager application to communicate on one side with the 3 d party POS application over inter-application communication and rich inter application communication and on the other side with the Peripheral Manager over IP (Wi-Fi) using HTTP or web-based interface commands. A set of API/SDK is created that allows 3 rd party POS application to interface with the Service Manager over inter-application communication. These APIs are simple and easy to implement. The API supports both raw ESC/POS commands and high level for ease of implementation and modification to existing POS applications. The APIs are similar to large extent to across the three platforms; Android, iOS and Windows. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS To enable the invention to be fully understood, preferred embodiments will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: FIG. 1 is the schematic illustration of the overall system architecture. FIG. 2 is the schematic illustration of the Peripheral Service application and inter application communication architect with the 3rd party POS application. FIG. 3 is the schematic illustration of the embedded system and programming layer architecture. FIG. 4 is the perspective view of the enclosure and the port configuration. Any notation, including dimensions on the drawings are by way of illustration only, and not limiting to the scope of the present invention. 4 DETAILED DESCRIPTION FIG. 1 is the schematic illustration of the system architecture. The architecture includes a tablet computer 100 running the Peripheral Manager Service application. The tablet computer hosts the Peripheral Manager Service app 101 and any third party POS app 102. The two applications communicate with each other using inter-application communication protocols and rich inter communication protocols. Peripheral Manager Service communicates through Internet Protocol (Wi-Fi) with the standalone embedded system box 103. The embedded system hosts the Peripheral Manager 104 and the COM ports 105. The third party point-of-sales app would send instructions to the Peripheral Manager Service 101 to be executed by the peripheral devices. The Peripheral Manager Service 101 in turn translates that instruction to the Standalone Embedded System Box 103. The program running on the Standalone Embedded System Box 103 sends the command to the peripheral devices and the commands are executed and run feedback to the 3rd party POS application 102. The peripheral devices such as printer 110, scanner 111, cash box 112 and Pinpad 113 and others can be connected using USB, RS232 and LAN interfaces. FIG. 2 is the schematic illustration of the Peripheral Service application and inter-application communication architect with the 3rd party POS application. The Peripheral Manager Service 101 is made up multiple program layers. Lower programming level layers 121 and 122 communicate over IP using the HTTP and web-based protocol with the Standalone Embedded System Box 103. The inter-app communication occurs between the third party POS app 102 and the SDK/API layer 120 of the Peripheral Manager Service 101. FIG. 3 is the schematic illustration of the embedded system and programming layer architecture. The tablet computer 100 is connected to the embedded system 103 using IP (Wi-Fi). The Wi-Fi is established by setting the default Wi-Fi module on the embedded system 103 as an access point and the password is entered from the Peripheral Service Manager app 101 for pairing. After pairing, the tablet computer 100 can either be connected directly to the embedded system 103, or through a wireless network router. 5 The embedded system 103 runs on the Raspberry Compute Module (BCM2835 System on Chip) which operates on a variant of the ARM Linux operating system, the Raspbian operating system. The Peripheral Manager 104 is installed on the system and its functionality is to manage all peripheral device drivers and acts as the translation layer between the tablet computer 100 and all connected peripheral devices. In the case of cloud based POS printing, the Peripheral Manager Service 101 redirects the request from the third party POS app 102 to the embedded system 103. The embedded system 103 receives the HTTP/Web Server request 130. Where needed the commands are processed using ESC/POS protocols 131 are for printing and cash box operations. The drivers layer 132 host common POS driver and a library of specific peripheral drivers all written in Arm based Linux system. The embedded systems 103 run Common Unix Printing Service CUPS (CUPS) 133 as low level printing protocols. Embedded system 103 is configured to run a variety of COM ports 105. The COM ports include 3-4 USB, RS232 and LAN. FIG. 4 is the perspective view of the enclosure and the port configuration of the Standalone Embedded System Box 103. It supports the following ports: a RS 232 port 140 supports devices which can only run on RS-232, a LAN port 141 to be used for Ethernet devices and further can be used as an Ethernet hub to connect more than one Ethernet devices, 3-4 powered USB port 142 and 143 (2 USB at 2A and another 1-2 at 1A). This facilitated powering devices such as Pinpad, barcode scanners, another USB powered devices, 24V protected power output 145 created for thermal printer. This makes the system as a single power lead system. The box get power by 24V AC/DC adaptor and almost all other peripheral devices including one thermal printer and cash box can be powered from the box. It also has a power jack of input power at 24V 144 for the box. The whole system including the powering of peripheral, tablet and printer run with a single AC/DC adaptor. It also has a power switch 146 and two LED indicators 147 that indicate the power status and the Wi-Fi connectivity status. 6

Claims (12)

1. The system of claim 1, a stand-alone Peripheral Manager that allows peripheral devices to be connected with USB, RS-232 and Ethernet port and be powered and communicate with 3 rd party cloud based POS applications that run on iOS, Android or Windows based tablet computer.

2. The system of claim 2, the Peripheral Manager Service application that allows inter application communication with the third party POS applications.

3. The system of claim 2, the Peripheral Manager Service communication with the Peripheral Manager and exchange commands between the 3 d party POS application on one side and the Peripheral manager on the other.

4. The system of claim 1, the Peripheral Manager hosting Linux based peripheral drivers on embedded ARM based system and communication over HTTP/Web-based commands with the Peripheral Service Manager using IP (Ethernet or Wi-Fi).

5. The system of claim 1, the Peripheral Manager can support a variety of peripheral devices such as thermal printers, scanner and readers, card readers and pin-pads etc.

6. The system of claim 1, the Peripheral Manager is expandable in its capacity to qualify more and more peripheral devices by adding or modifying drivers easily and program layers within its architect.

7. The system of claim 1, the stand alone Peripheral Manager supports ESC/POS commands.

8. The system of claim 2, the Peripheral Manager Service provides SDK for three different platforms: Android, iOS and windows, which are very similar to each other and provides a quick and easy method of implementation. 1

9. The system of claim 2, APIs support both raw ESC/POS commands and high-level commands to improve ease of implementation and reduce modifications to existing POS apps

10. The system of claim 1, the low cost USB peripheral devices without the need of Wi-Fi enabled modules or Ethernet ports can easily be connected to the cloud based and web based POS applications running on iOS, Android or Windows based tablet computer.

11. The system of claim 1, the multiple tablet computers (including the mobile smart phones) running the same POS application can be synched to a single Peripheral Manager Box and the box can receives commands from all such devices.

12. All updates and new and qualification of additional peripheral devices and be uploaded automatically once the system is on line. 2