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Hardware

Settings → Hardware (/setting/hardware) configures how this browser talks to physical devices — barcode scanners and printers — either through a small local service (the HW agent) or directly via the browser.

Device profiles are stored in the browser's localStorage, so they're per-browser, not per-user-account.

HW agent

The HW agent (nextintranet_agent/) is a small aiohttp service you run on the same machine or LAN as your scanner/printer hardware. It bridges:

  • Serial devices (barcode scanners) — reads lines from a serial port and, in scanner mode, emits each decoded line as a scanner.data event.
  • Printers — via CUPS, either printing a fetched file (e.g. a rendered label PDF) or sending a raw payload (such as ZPL) directly to the printer.

Add an agent under Agents with:

  • Label — a friendly name.
  • Base URL — where the agent is reachable, e.g. http://localhost:9101.
  • Token — sent as X-Agent-Token on every request to the agent.
  • Capabilities — optional comma-separated filter (serial, scanner, print); leave empty to allow all.
  • Agent config — optional JSON of defaults (e.g. default printer or serial options) passed through to the agent.

The browser talks to the agent directly over HTTP for one-off calls (/v1/status, /v1/serial/*, /v1/print/*) and keeps a WebSocket open to the agent for realtime events. Refresh status checks every configured agent's /v1/status and shows Online/Unknown per agent. The Enabled/Disabled toggle disconnects all agents at once without deleting their configuration.

Station ID

The Station field sets a stationId used to scope realtime events to "this physical station" — for example, the live iBOM viewer uses it to target WebSocket events at the scanning station currently working on a board.

Browser scanners (Web Serial)

On Chrome/Chromium over HTTPS or localhost, a USB serial barcode scanner can be connected directly from the browser via the Web Serial API, with no agent required:

  1. Click Add scanner, then Select port — the browser prompts for permission to access a specific serial device.
  2. Set the baudrate (default 115200) and save — the scanner connects immediately.

Connected/disconnected status is shown per device, with Connect / Disconnect / Remove actions. This path is not available in browsers without Web Serial support (e.g. Firefox, Safari).

  • Print queues — queueing and rendering the labels a printer ultimately prints
  • Put-away check — a page that consumes scanner input from either an agent or a browser-connected scanner