Creating an alert

jaarius

Hey all,

I need to create an alert message to tell a user that a printer had been turned off. Basically the details we are printing come from several different sources. For example if the printer is rebooted most of the information will be printed. i need to alert the user to restart an application so all of the information can be printed.

Is there a way to may monitor lpt1 and alert when the printer goes awol?

I would appreciate any help you could give.

cheers,
j

Ginger

Are you looking for a coding solution or are you looking for a purchased solution

Capt'n Midnight

If it had a IP address you could ping it and send a message when you got no ping back,

many network printers will link to SYSLOG servers so you can trap messages that way, but it won't send a message if it's off.

Ginger

If you plan to do some coding there is a Printer object within Windows that you can interogate the printer before printing, ie the same way that windows does to see if the printer is offline.

There may be better objects out there for this type of work

aFlabbyPanda

you can create a performance alert. something like this should get you started.

http://www.jsifaq.com/SUBG/TIP3000/rh3046.htm

jaarius

Hey lads,

The printer has no nic and is a label printer.

I guess this is bit more difficult than I assumed it would be.

Having done a bit more reading I guess I am go to have to do some coding. It has been about 8 years since I have touched a line of coded so for my I may as well have not coded at all.

@Ginger: Could you give me some more info about the object in windows that informs you when the printer is offline? That's what I am looking for I think.


again cheers lads,
j

Ginger

maybe this will help.. its been a very long time since i have done this work

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f95a5211-e272-4e02-a6e2-11e7f5dbd973&DisplayLang=en

N

jaarius

Hey Ginger,

I just read through this thread and I never mention that the system is running XP. Unless you read minds, then ignore this.

j

Ginger

Ì keep getting them mixed up is it pyschpathic or telepathic that means you can read minds.

Are you running XP. I just know the system calls are based in the Windows code. I know that code is based for 95/NT 4.0 but i think there are extensions for XP

aFlabbyPanda

the performance alert will work for any printer (NIC or LPT)

I've used it to notify users that the print queue has reached X amount. works on xp, 2k or 2k3.