Zebra ZM400 USB Printing in WINCE 5.0 and VB.NET

Question

I have an application in VB.NET, for smart devices, that prints labels containing some product information such as manufacturar name, product name, product weight and a barcode with the product name. In the past I used to print it using the serial port of my device but, due to a hardware change, the new device my company bought doesn't have the serial port anymore, but it has more USB ports than the old device.

I googled for answers but most of them didn't point me to an answer, due to most, or all of them, don't use the .NET CF to print in Zebras. Many of topics I found explain how to create a connection to USB port but, obviously, when moved to WIN CE, it didn't work.

I have the code for Zebra printing (ZPL II), just need a way to send it to one of my USB ports and check if it's printing the correct information.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You need a driver for the printer. Windows CE provide a generic USB print transport driver that should work with many of those text-based printers, you may add it to your Windows CE OS image and try it. If it works you may be able to send data to the printer by using PRN*: instead of COM*: as device name (PRN1:, PRN2: etc.).