Synergy Controller Application Note 4
August 2010, Revision - C Tidal Engineering Corporation © 2010
Page 7 of 18
Controller Setup
No changes are required to any settings on the Synergy Controller for this barcode
application; however, we did import a macro file. The macro file provides the look-up
table used to interpret the barcode scans and execute an action based on the barcode.
Macro File Format
The macro file used by the Synergy Controller is a simple comma separated file easily
generated with Microsoft Excel, or any other program that can save to .csv files.
The file layout consists of two columns, the barcode text(column A), and a
communication command (or string of commands) to execute when that barcode text
is entered (column B). The communication commands can be any valid
communication commands, separated by a semicolon (;). The command string length
can be up to 900 characters. A communications command list for the Synergy
Controller is available in the technical manual and downloaded from
www.TidalEng.com/synergy.htm
As an example of this, let’s assume that I want to stop the chamber, load and run the
profile “Product1.vpl” after the barcode text “123456-78” is scanned.
First open a blank spreadsheet in Excel. Then enter 123456-78 in column A and the
command string “= off; = fileopen 1 “Product1.vpl”; = run 1;” for column B.
Note: The profiles that we specify in the “fileopen” command should be loaded on the
Synergy Controller already.
Sample Excel Macro spreadsheet
We can create as many barcode entries in the file as we need, as long as they are
unique. However, we can only load one .csv file into the controller at a time, so all
the barcode identifiers we need should be in that file.
Once you have completed your macro file in Excel, click on File/Save As, enter a file
name, and set the Save As type to CSV (Comma Delimited)(*.csv) and save the file.
