mikaello / emit-punch-cards-communication

TypeScript utils for communication with EMIT punch cards

emit-punch-cards-communication

Utils for communication with EMIT punch card devices. These utils are implemented wih TypeScript and based on streams. To communicate with the 250 and MTR4 device, the Serial API (see also Serial API on Github or MDN) is used, while for the eScan device WebUSB API was needed.

NB: The Serial API currently only works in Chrome and Edge, while WebUSB API does also work on Chrome for Android.

Install

This library is published to NPM as ES modules (no CommonJS/IIFE):

yarn add @mikaello/emit-punch-card-communication

Usage

See example project to see how this library could be used, especially helper.ts.

Status

• ❌ eScan2 device
• ✅ eScan device
• ❌ ECU1
• ✅ 250 device
• ✅ MTR4 device
• ❌ ePost

emit-punch-cards-communication's Issues

eScan: Implement parsing of time frames (not only status messages)

In eScan transformer, the function parseDumpTag(frameData: Uint8Array): DumpTagFrame is now empty, so frames containing time information are discarded.

Time frames consist of a header and a protocol dependent time payload. There are eight different tag protocols (number 0-7).

Add continuous integration with Travis or GitHub actions

All tests should be run on every push, this is a prerequisite for adding auto update of dependencies (with e.g. Renovate).

eScan: Handle large time frames

Today a ringbuffer is used to store temporary data read from the eScan device, this has the downside that you need to now the max input size you can get, or we need smarter reading of large input frames (which could be several megabytes).

For the 250 and MTR4 this was OK, because those had predefined (and quite small) max sizes, the eScan time frames can be huge.

Dependency Dashboard

This issue lists Renovate updates and detected dependencies. Read the Dependency Dashboard docs to learn more.

Awaiting Schedule

These updates are awaiting their schedule. Click on a checkbox to get an update now.

• chore(deps): update dependency @types/node to v20.12.12

Open

These updates have all been created already. Click a checkbox below to force a retry/rebase of any.

• chore(deps): update dependency prettier to v3.2.5
• chore(deps): update dependency gulp to v5
• chore(deps): update dependency rollup to v4
• chore(deps): update dependency web-streams-polyfill to v4
• Click on this checkbox to rebase all open PRs at once

Detected dependencies

github-actions

.github/workflows/docs.yml

• actions/checkout v4
• peaceiris/actions-gh-pages v4

.github/workflows/npm-lint-and-test.yml

• actions/checkout v4
• bahmutov/npm-install v1
• actions/checkout v4
• actions/setup-node v4
• bahmutov/npm-install v1

npm

example/package.json

• @rollup/plugin-node-resolve 15.2.3
• @types/node 20.12.11
• @types/w3c-web-usb 1.0.10
• gulp 4.0.2
• gulp-typescript 6.0.0-alpha.1
• rollup 3.29.4
• rollup-plugin-typescript2 0.36.0
• serve 14.2.3
• servor 4.0.2
• ts-node 10.9.2
• tslib 2.6.2
• typescript 5.4.5

package.json

• @types/jest 29.5.12
• jest 29.7.0
• prettier 3.2.4
• ts-jest 29.1.2
• typescript 5.4.5
• web-streams-polyfill 3.3.3

regex

.github/workflows/docs.yml

• typedoc 0.25.13

---

• Check this box to trigger a request for Renovate to run again on this repository

Consider moving away from Gulp in example project

Currently, the builds are failing because we use Node 18, and gulp-typescript does not support that.

I have raised an issue in the TypeScript documentation repo with this concern.

Alternatives:

• Grunt
• Webpack

Use SerialAPI polyfill for eScan

eScan is only available trough the WebUSB interface on OSX (maybe on other OS-s too), and 240/MTR4 is pocky available trough Serial API, this means quite a lot of custom code for each API even if the logic is much the same. It may be possible to use https://github.com/google/web-serial-polyfill directly to simulate Serial API, or a fork of this to implement the same workflow and more code sharing between eScan and the 250/MTR4 implementation.