This support article demonstrates how to pair the idChamp RS4 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) RFID Reader with Windows 10 and SerialMagic Professional. Note that this feature is ONLY available for Windows 10 build 14328 and later.
Pairing your idChamp RS4 with Windows 10 is a two-step process. First, we will pair the RS4 directly through Windows Bluetooth settings. After the connection to Windows 10 is established, we will connect to SerialMagic Professional. We will then test the configuration to make sure everything is working properly.
You will need the following for this tutorial:
- An idChamp RS4 Bluetooth RFID reader
- A Windows 10 computer with Bluetooth 4.0 (Bluetooth Low Energy) capabilities
- The latest release of SerialMagic Professional for Windows
- A few RFID tags to test with
This tutorial will only work after yACK BLE has been used to set up the BlueSnap Smart to be able to pair with Windows 10.
Pair via Windows 10 Bluetooth Settings
1. Power on your idChamp RS4.
2. Launch the Windows 10 Settings application. You can do this by clicking on the Windows Start button (located at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen), then clicking on the Settings icon.
3. Click on “Devices.”
4. Then, click “Add Bluetooth or other device.” Depending on your version of Windows 10, you may only need to scroll down to “Other Devices” where Windows will automatically discover nearby Bluetooth devices.
5. Once you see your RS4 appear in the discovered devices section, click on it. You may be prompted for a PIN code. The default PIN code will be either “1234” or “0000.”
6. Once you have successfully paired with the Windows Bluetooth application, you are ready to continue to Step #2!
Connect to SerialMagic Professional
1. Launch the SerialMagic Professional application.
2. From the main window, click on “Add” to add a new connection.
3. Select “SerialMagic will connect to the remote Bluetooth device using Bluetooth LE.” It is the 5th option from the top. If you are using a previous version of Windows, such as Windows 7, this option will be grayed out.
4. Next, click on the image of the idChamp RS4 within the “Choose scanner type” section. Click Next.
5. The following screen shows the nearby BLE devices. Click on your RS4 to select it, then click Next.
6. Select your preferred input method for your RS4. For the purposes of this tutorial, we are using “Like a keyboard, data posted to the cursor location.” Click Next.
7. You should see, “Input device was setup successfully.” Click “Finish.”
8. SerialMagic will present you will get a window to review the connection settings and make any final adjustments. If everything looks correct, click “OK.”
Test The Connection
Now that you have successfully connected your idChamp RS4 to SerialMagic Professional, we will start the connection and test a few tags.
1. From the main window of SerialMagic Professional, make sure the connection we created in Step #2 is selected.
2. After selecting the RS4’s connection, click “Start!”
3. After starting the connection, you should notice that the blue LED on your RS4 went from flashing to solid.
4. Pull up SerialMagic Professional again by clicking on its icon on the Windows taskbar. The “Start” button should now say “Stop.”
We are ready to test some tags!
5. If you selected the “Like a keyboard…” option in Step #2, launch an application that accepts text input (such as Notepad).
6. Click inside Notepad (or whichever application you are testing with) so that the cursor focus is within the application.
7. Now, place an RFID tag over your RS4. The tag’s data will be inserted at the cursor location.
If the data is not in the expected format, you can adjust the data post settings in SerialMagic Professional’s settings.