Access Card Printing

Access cards are now supplied to members as part of a revamped faster and easier New Member process.

To help this process the unique code of each access card is recorded and uploaded into HSBNE's membership access system ready for new members to join up. And. Printed in alphabetic and QR code using a specialized printer.

This How To is about both steps

  1. Recording card codes for upload into HSBNE servers
  2. Printing Access Cards with the text and QR code.

It is best that people wanting to help with creating HSBNE New Member access cards are familiar with

  1. USB to TTL converters,
  2. building simple circuits with a breadboard or soldering station,
  3. reading poorly documented, messy Python code,
  4. installing Python and required libraries.
  5. taming exotic printer technology
  6. patient and with time of 1 to 1.5 hours per hundred access cards

Major preparation steps are:

  1. set up Python 3 and copy the files
  2. have a MS Word compatible word processor installed and record of the path to the exe.
  3. build a USB to card loop circuit
  4. get the printer producing test print cards from the Windows driver console

See the tools page for files

Notes:

  1. Python libraries used are: pyserial, pyqrcode, python-docx, tkinter, PIL, os, sys
  2. Uses a Word template IDCard_P.docx set to A8 page size
  3. Needs manual creation of sub directories

It is highly recommended to use the vendor's online resources to learn about the beast. https://www.zebra.com/ap/en/support-downloads/printers/card/p330i.html

Options for better system

A Raspberry Pi with touch screen would allow a system of self printing. New members would be given a card and access to this system to 'label' their card. This idea would need to sort out the registering of cards. But registering alone is much quicker task than printing and registering.