>>I would like to know if anyone has ever used a Psion Workabout
>>Hand Held Terminal as a collection tool with VFP6.
>>If you have i would like to talk to u please.
>
>I've done it about a year ago, with FPD2.6. I had trouble because I didn't have a direct cable connection with the thingy, and had to use the flash ram gadget and format it between receiving and sending the data. It took me three days to write some usable code in OPL, and two hours to connect .dbf to its data.
>
>It's all zipped long ago, but I still have these zips on my disk.

Dragan,

I did a live inventory system several years ago with FPD2 and used Psion HC-100, and an attached PSC laser gun, if I recall correctly. I don't know how much that is like a Workabout. I had some difficulty with the language they used, but I thought it was similar to the old BASIC field and buffer statements.

I also recall that the file naming was a bit awkward. i.e. they called this formatted text file a .dbf I think I had to call FPD RUN commands to operate the communication library and I would build a batch file on the fly from FPD, then call it, which then ran the communication, then back to FPD, pulled the records from that .dbf, which was NOT a .dbf into a REAL .dbf with one long field, then scanned that and cut out and formatted what I needed for the inventory .dbf, and so on.

If this sounds like your situation, I would suggest separate directory and .prg procedures for the Psion interaction to avoid the naming hassle.

In defense of the Psion, I had stock, draw, count and restock operations defined in a task menu. The operators would download sets of orders and products to draw to fill tractor trailers, and products and storage locations to stock forklifts full of product back on the racks behind it. Every bundle was tagged in a time sensitive product for FIFO production and distribution inventory, often the in and the out going on at the same time for multiple orders on the same Psion.

Cross docking on the forklift when necessary/possible made a transaction both into and out of inventory while the product went from the production line to the trailer without stopping.

Environment was indoor/outdoor temps 90/-10, lots of shocks but they were seldom dropped since the fiberglass resin made them so sticky they were hard to let go of :)

About a half-dozen of these operated by a dozen or so people doing all of the above. A problem was that as the number of records increased the processing slowed down since several of the commands were strictly sequential through all of the files on the Psion (like LOCATE) A charge was good for about a shift, but we downloaded more frequently because of the speed, and swapped batteries then. FPD would take all of these transactions and arbitrate the whole mess, adjusting inventory, tallying production, printing manifests and lading for the trucker, etc. real time, evening uploads to the legacy accounting system.

This has been working for several years and about two months ago my client contacted me for an upgrade to FPD2.6 !! :) They had updated their accounting package, you see.

We did the upgrade and rebuild, but thankfully, the old Psion code, since it was bounced through the text file, still runs unchanged. (Whew, end of story)

hth
Al Allison
AMPS