Setup Guide

Table Of Contents

Thinkify Reader Protocol Overview

Here we give an overview of the Thinkify Reader Protocol message structure and provide a

high-level summary of the major command groups available to the user.

The Thinkify Reader Protocol (TRP) is a human-readable ASCII protocol that allows users and

applications to set parameters for RF control, tag list acquisition, tag programming, and digital

I/O behavior. TRP may also be used to acquire data from the reader and be notified of tag read

events, I/O events, and reader status.

TRP is used across all Thinkify reader products and supported hardware interfaces including;

RS232, USB, and Ethernet.

Command Structure

The Thinkify Reader Protocol uses a Command-Response model. Communication is initiated by

the Host, and the Reader responds with an acknowledgment or data.

Users may interact with the reader from a terminal program or their own software using the

Thinkify APIs. All that is required is that they send strings to the device over an active

connection, and terminate messages correctly. Replies are sent back, often on multiple lines,

terminated by a “READY>” prompt.

Host Commands

Host commands to the Reader are ASCII strings terminated with a Carriage Return. Line feed

characters are ignored by the reader and may be sent without effect. The Reader does not

echo commands back to the Host.

Valid command messages are composed of numeric characters in the range of 0-9 (0x30 -

0x39), ASCII characters in the range of a..Z (0x41 - 0x7A), and the carriage return character

(0x0D).

The general format of a Host-to-Reader message is:

(here [ ] denotes an element that may be optional)

<COMMAND> – Typically a single character.

<SUBCOMMAND> – Typically a single character.

<PARAMs> – Vary in length and depend on the command being sent. There are

no spaces between parameters, if multiple parameters are sent as