Patent Grant
7339690
The present invention relates to identification cards. In particular, the present invention relates to printers which are used to print identification cards.
Identification cards have found widespread use for carrying identification and security related information for an individual. It is often desirable to create an identification card using an identification card printer. In fact, identification card printers are often used to print large numbers of cards, such as drivers' licenses. Such identification card printers have typically connected to the parallel port of a computer which is used for receiving print data and a serial part which is used for receiving a second type of data such as smart card encoder information.
In general, identification card printers are viewed as output devices which convert a text or image file from a computer application to a visual image on media such as paper or a plastic card. However, identification card printers are actually a unique application because they are both input and output devices. Identification card printers convert an image/text from a host computer application into a visual image on a plastic card. Further, the printer provides full duplex communications to an application resident on the host computer for secure encoding of information from the host to a data media on the card e.g. magnetic stripe, proximity transceiver memory, smart card memory or a microcontroller, for example.
Full duplex communications from the printer over a connection requires the customization of a software driver to provide the necessary Application Programmers Interface (API) to the plethora of applications that may be required to construct a card. Each driver is customized to the printer, host operating system, applications, API's and communications hardware. This customization leads to a large number of drivers which represent a large investment for the printer manufacturer in driver development and a significant confusion for the user as they sort through which driver to use.
The nature of the communication techniques used to communicate with identification card printers has tended to limit their functionality and the efficiency with which they are used. Further, the communication techniques have resulted in a significant portion of the product development budget being consumed by software development required for driver compatibility.
An identification card printer for printing an image on an identification card, is provided which includes a print mechanism adapted to deposit material on to the card. A network adapter is configured to couple to a network. A print drive module controls the print mechanism in response to a drive module input. A client/server module is coupled to the network adapter and functions as a client on the network to responsively provide data to the drive module input. The client/server module further functions as a server on the network and serve data to the network.
The present invention includes an identification card printer, (i.e., a printer used to print onto identification cards), which is capable of communicating using a standardized network communication protocol and/or a standardized object based data structure.
Printers have been connected to host computers via a network or point-to-point communications link such as a serial or parallel port. Applications resident on the host computer process information that is communicated over the network link to an output device, the printer, which converts the information to a visual image on a media such as a paper or plastic card.
However, the plethora of host computer operating systems, networking protocols and application programmer's interfaces (API's) results in a confusing array of printer drivers which are narrowly optimized for a specific printer, host operating system, application API etc. This situation results in confusing for the user of the printer and considerable expense in the driver developer. Identification cards have over laminates that provide for increased card durability and security and use customized hologram secure markings. The lamination process control settings (time, temperature, speed and pressure) are commonly communicated to the printer via a host configuration application. The lamination configuration is commonly provided by an application other than the print image generation application. Identification cards may contain data on a variety of media including magnetic stripes, proximity transceivers with memory and smart card chips. The identification card printer provides the encoding for one or more of these data media. The encoding applications are often provided by several software manufacturers and reside on the host computer. The communication and validation of the information for card encoding adds further complexity to the development of drivers to configure and communicate the necessary data to manufacture a card.
Identification card printers are complex electromechanical devices often having several hundred component parts. It is desirable to provide information on the health of the printer and the status of the card printing and encoding process to a host computer or a networked remote computer for providing a visual alert of problems and for validation of successful encoding. The need to accommodate full duplex communications between the identification card printer and host computer further complicates the development of a driver. Standard operating system driver architectures such as Microsoft Windows, or Macintosh do not typically support full duplex communications and custom “work arounds” are needed for identification card printers.
In one aspect, the invention provides for a printer with an embedded network hybrid client/server that uses standard networking technologies such as OPC, JAVA, and XML (extensible Markup Language) to eliminate or reduce the need for developing drivers that are operating system and printer specific. In one aspect, this is achieved through the use of an object server data communication technique. In one aspect, the data objects can be defined by the communication technique such that new objects can easily be added as new or different printers are introduced.
Identification card printers function as a card manufacturing system. Identification card printers are provided text and image data via a communication interface from a host computer which is running a resident application. Such applications often rasterize an image provided from a digital camera or scanned image and provide the required color settings for the printer's print engine. A typical system is shown in
Printer 54 includes a client 70 and a server 72 for coupling to network 56 and communicating with host 52. Applications 74 run in a microprocessor 76 in the identification card printer 54 under the control of an operating system 78. As explained in more detail below, applications 74 receive data objects from network 56 through client 70. Examples of such objects include images, smart card data, text, video, animation, voice, bar code information or magnetic stripe information. Client 70 can be a browser client or a module of web server 72 which is configured to receive such objects. Applications 74 responsively control hardware drivers 80 to control various types of hardware elements in printer 54 such as a print head 82 or a data writing device 91, which is used to place data onto an identification card 85. Data writing device 91, can be, for example, a magnetic recording head by a magnetic stripe recorder, a smart card encoder, a proximity card encoder, or a bar code writer. Any type of hardware application can be provided to operate other hardware elements, generally depicted at box 93, such as those discussed with respect to
With present invention, the various types of data objects which are transferred through network 56 can be hardware independent and can be created in accordance with an industry standard data object format such as that provided by XML or OPC. Thus, an image, such as a rasterized photograph for printing on an identification card by printer 54, is transferred to printer 54 in the form of a data object. This data object is not printer specific. Instead, applications 74 which reside in printer 54 are used to perform the final conversion from the standardized format into the particular format required by hardware drivers 80. For example, print head 82 may require a particular format of a bit stream in order to create the image. However, the applications running on host computer 52 do not need any specific knowledge of this format or knowledge of the particular operation of the hardware within printer 54.
Server 72 is also capable of serving other types of data to host computer 52. This data includes diagnostic information 204A, security lockout information, status information 246 related to computer 52, video data 248, audio data 250, voice, etc., some of which are depicted in
The present invention can utilize any industry standard which is capable of communicating data objects. Two competing technologies are emerging in the personal computing and networking arena The Microsoft and Intel based computer are based on the COM (Component Object Model), DCOM (Distributed COM) and Active X Controls. This object oriented technology base provides for wrapping software functions in a package or object with a standard interface and protocol. This technology enables a high degree of software reuse and permits the distribution of an application over a network. Networked applications permit the execution of an application between a collection of hardware platforms and operating systems.
The second competing technology family is CORBA, JAVA and RNII. These technologies are led by Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems. These technologies are also object based and are also capable of networking applications. Java is hardware independent, which results from its Java Virtual Machine (JVM). However, the JVM does add overhead and can reduce performance. This technology is often used with the UNIX operating system. These technologies provide for a change in computing from the single CPU based machine to networked computing.
By applying this technology to identification card printers, the printer becomes a node on the network with capabilities for computing and sharing of networked objects. This expanded role for the identification card printer, as both a client and server of data and objects, provides a new opportunity to solve the dilemma of many custom print drivers and well as providing for new printer functions.
In operation, server 72 will initially receive a request for data from, for example, a remote application 58 in accordance with a communication protocol (e.g., TCP/IP). Next, server 72 interprets the request and obtains the requested data. Finally, server 72 provides the requested data to the remote client in accordance with the communication protocol. Client 70, on the other hand, makes requests for data to remote servers, such as computer 52 shown in
HTML (depicted in
Typically, identification card printers are embedded software systems consisting of a single or multiple embedded micro controller which are used for network communications, print head control and the other related card manufacturing control tasks. The typical embedded controller is an 8 or 16 bit micro controller such as the Motorola 68HC11 or HC16 family. An embedded micro controller such as the Motorola MPC823 can manage the network communication from a host or client, as well as controlling the electromechanical components of the printer.
The software control in such microprocessors typically employs a “round robin” or interrupts driven architecture with a single software thread. The use of a kernel can improve performance and permits multi-threading similar to that used on PC platforms for running multiple applications at the same time. One such architecture is shown and described in co-pending application Ser. No. 09/477,970, filed Jan. 5, 2000 and entitled PRINTER OR LAMINATOR WITH MULTI-THREADED PROGRAM ARCHITECTURE which is incorporated herein by reference. Preferably, an operating system or kernel provides efficient use of the CPU and to provide for multitasking of communications, printer control etc. for the embedded system of the invention. The embedded system may use a custom, proprietary operating system or a commercial embedded operating system such as the RTXC, Nucleus, Wind River operating system, Microsoft CE or a JAVA based operating system with a Java Virtual Machine.
The present invention is applicable to any type of printer with a primary task receiving a file, object, or bit stream, of text and image data and printing the image and text to a media such as paper, or a plastic card.
In one aspect, server 72 of
In one aspect, the identification card printer can serve or subscribe to objects such as the DCOM/Active x Controls or the JAVA derivative EJB, or CORBA ORBS. This invention can be used as a node of a network. The network may include a computer such as a PC, a mainframe, etc. Preferably, the networked hybrid server printer uses a technology base that is compatible with the network and the host application. A solution for the Microsoft family employs DCOM/Active X technologies with an OPC hybrid server.
One preferred embodiment combines a Java based embedded hybrid server with a DCOM object based host server, which enables the identification card printer to inter-operate with all host computer applications.
In one embodiment, the printer also operates as a server to other networked printers. In this aspect, the printer can serve data or objects to a second printer such as a load sharing printer, which acts as a client and is able to subscribe to objects being served from printer.
In one aspect, the invention can also be used as an integrated standalone unit where the host application runs on the printer. The printer can be networked with other devices such as digital camera and other printers that are clients.
In one aspect, the printer 54 can provide audio and/or video data 250 or 248, respectively, to the browser 64 to alert the user to problems with the printer, as indicated in
XML can also be used to communicate security data between the PC 52 and the printer 54. Cards for financial purposes often require a secure system to avoid the use of the printer to make fraudulent credit cards, driver's licenses, etc. A public key/private key system is often used to provide security. A database of public keys is included in the PC resident application and an operator is required to use their private key to operate the machine. XML provides an ability to identify a special data type for the public key and the encrypted private key.
In general, the embedded XML parser in client 70 and/or server 72 in the printer 54 is able to parse incoming data based upon data type, and route the data to the appropriate application in the printer. For example, the print file image or text data is routed to the printing application, the magstripe encoding data is routed to the mag application, etc. Conversely, the XML parser can assemble a message sent by the printer over the network to other networked devices, such as the PC 52, and can include data such as alarms and alerts, security key, video and audio simulation of a card jam, email a message to service provider etc.
Examples of various types of data that can be transmitted to or from the printer 54 in accordance with a standardized data format include:
Printer 154 includes a communication layer 180 configured to send and receive data on network 156 in accordance with the TCP/IP standard. Software on printer 154 operates under the control of kernel and kernel services 182 which is run on a microprocessor 184 such as a Motorola MPC823. Printer 154 also contains an XML parser 186 configured to parse data received from network 156. Printer 154 runs a browser client 188 capable of receiving, for example, data formatted in accordance with the HTTP or XML standards. Further, printer 154 can run server software such as a web server 190, or an SNMP server 192, or an SMTP server 214. With these layers, printer 154 is capable of transmitting information to a browser client, such as browser client 162, over network 156. Further SNMP server 192 can be used to send notification in accordance with an e-mail standard to a remote location. The various software layers in printer 154 interact with embedded printer applications 194 for printing and encoding an identification card 85 shown in
In the embodiment illustrated in
In one aspect, printer 154 can provide diagnostic information 204A and status information 246 over a network, shown in
In general, printer 154 is provided for printing an image onto a medium such as an identification card 85 shown in
As discussed above, in one aspect of the invention data is communicated to the printer using XML or extensible markup language. XML allows for the generic description of data. That is, it can be used to define data without the application knowing what the format is ahead of time. This is achieved through the use of a DTD, or Data Type Definition. Another type of data definition is called a SCHEMA. The XML parser reads in this DTD and then formats the data in accordance to the rules contained. This allows the parser to check the syntax as well as resolve any entities. An internet appliance can benefit from this through the use of ubiquitous data. This appliance can receive any data that may be of benefit and use it without knowing its format. Conversely, data can be presented in such a way that it can be resolved to mean different things to different appliances.
XML can contain any type of data, that is it can contain binary, replaceable text, processing instructions and tags. The following is a description of some of these types, it should be noted that these data types are not all inclusive.
Binary data in XML is represented by the CDATA tag. This tag allows anything that resides between the symbols <![CDATA and]]> to be ignored by the parser. This allows any character, within the Unicode set that XML understands, to be inserted. This effectively allows any binary data to be included in this block. As an example, sound is represented as a binary file. A program can translate the information into sound, for example. This technique can be used to encapsulate any type of data in an XML document. Doing so allows a document to contain very rich content.
Replaceable Text or an Entity can be parsed or non-parsed text. Replaceable text is of the parsed kind. This allows a parser to replace each occurrence with the contents of the defined entity. An example of an entity definition would be:
This would then be resolved by the parser as:
A processing instruction allows a document to contain instructions for the application. This allows the application to use these instructions without the parser interpreting them. An example would be:
This instruction is passed to the application as a printer instruction with the variable color set to blue. The most common form of this instruction is the XML declaration itself.
A tag is denoted by the start tag/end tag sequence. An example is <color> #x3</color>. This defines the value of color to be 3, as denoted by the hexadecimal number between the tags. This tag sequence can be defined in the DTD and can be validated against the definition of the tag.
Using the DTD that XML provides, the data type used by the printer to render an image can be described. If an image is considered a collection of objects that form a document, then this document can be described in an orderly method using XML. Utilizing XML to provide the document description allows for a portable format that is removed from the application.
To print a document on a printer, the printer first breaks down each element into a collection of objects that reside on the card. These can be different for each card. XML even includes syntax to describe data that does not need to be present for all documents. Taking this into account all the elements that comprise a card can be included and it can be specified what the minimum configuration is and printing then requires only those elements. As each object is included on the document, it is then possible to describe a set of rules that would come into effect when an application uses that particular object. This allows for the maximum flexibility without creating an overly complex document.
The DTD can contain definitions for such elements in the document as:
Each of these elements can be broken down to their component pieces. For example Image Data could contain:
While not all of these elements are needed to describe a picture, they do describe all the properties that a picture can contain. Those not needed are set to optional. Once each element of a document is described, the complete layout of the card should be descriptive enough to handle any occurrence. When new methods for encryption, media collection, or data manipulation are created, the version number can be used to differentiate this data from the old data. This allows for flexibility without sacrificing the integrity of the data.
In summary, identification card printer 54 having client 70 server 72 performs substantially different from traditional networked printers. In particular, traditional network printers are typically output devices that process print jobs received over the network. Occasionally, these printers may include alarms that are triggered automatically when certain conditions exist causing the printer to provide information on its status. However, this is not the equivalent to that of the server aspect of identification card printer 54 that provides information in response to a request for the information. As mentioned above, this serving ability allows printer 54 to dynamically provide data as needed by the subscribing client, which could be a diagnostic application running on a host computer such as application 58 (
Also, traditional printers lack the present invention's client aspect that allows printer 54 to subscribe to data over the network. This allows printer 54 to, for example, request instructions 208 (
Although the present invention has been described with reference to preferred embodiments, workers skilled in the art will recognize that changes may be made in form and detail without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
The present invention is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. application Ser. No. 09/614,825, and entitled “IDENTIFICATION CARD PRINTER WITH CLIENT/SERVER;” filed Jul. 12, 2000 now abandoned, which in turn claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/143,731, filed Jul. 14, 1999, and entitled “PRINTER WITH EMBEDDED HYBRID CLIENT/SERVER.
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