Milan / Paylink System Manual Issue 1.5 29 January 2020
CONFIDENTIAL
Not to be disclosed without prior written permission from Aardvark Embedded Solutions Ltd
Page 57 of 71
Multiple Paylink Unit Support.
Although the Paylink system was designed around the idea of a single Paylink unit being connected
to a PC, facilities are provided to support multiple Paylink units.
The only change that is visible to a programmer when multiple units are in use is that the
OpenSpecificMHE is used to associate the program with a specific one one of the multiple Paylink
unit interface areas.
It is envisaged that in a system with multiple Paylink units a separate instance of the program will be
running for each Paylink unit interface area and a supervisory level will start the different programs.
This is not compulsory as OpenSpecificMHE can be called repeatedly with different parameters so
as to switch between Paylink unit interface areas.
Unit Identification
The USB interface chip on a Paylink unit provides a “Serial Number”. This is pre-set during
manufacture to AE000001 - but is not used or checked in a system that does not have multiple units.
When the Paylink / AECDriver program is run, the default is for it to search all USB devices that may
be a Paylink, and connect to the first one it finds. When the /S=<SerialNo> switch is provided on the
command line, this has two effects:
Firstly, it causes the driver program to create a named Paylink unit interface area, which can then be
connected to by an OpenSpecificMHE call with a matching parameter.
Secondly it causes the driver program to search all USB devices that may be a Paylink until it finds
one with a matching programmed serial number.
The serial number is not associated with the Paylink firmware, and any release of Paylink firmware
may be used in a multiple Paylink system. The (Windows) PaylinkSerial utility is available as a part
of the released SDK, which takes as a parameter a serial number and programs it into the only
Paylink unit currently connected to the system.
Operating modes
On Windows (only) the Paylink system can run in one of five different modes. These do not need to
be specified explicitly in the configuration file, but are the inevitable consequence of the parameters
in the configuration file.
All Paylink configurations require the presence of Paylink hardware. This hardware may be a full
Paylink unit, a Paylink Lite interface or a micro-Paylink dongle.
The five modes that Paylink can run in are:
Normal Paylink: Here the peripherals are controlled by the firmware within the external Paylink
unit. This is the “normal” / default mode for the Paylink driver. This is the only
mode available on all Linux distributions.
Paylink Lite: Here the peripherals are controlled by the PC driver program, using the Paylink
Lite interface to access the peripherals. This mode will be used where a Protocol
is specified as “on Paylink Lite”. On Linux this requires the Paylink executable,
which is only available on some Intel distributions.
Micro Paylink: Here the peripherals are CPI USB peripherals controlled by the PC driver
program, with a micro-Paylink dongle providing the authorisation. This mode will
be used where a “Using Dongle” line is present in the System section. On Linux
this requires the Paylink executable, which is only available on some Intel
distributions.
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