25-03-2021

Practical Automation Driver

There are two methods for changing the ip address on a Practical Automation printer with an ethernet port. These are to:

  • Use a web browser to talk to the printer. This may not work with some browsers (Firefox is most reliable)
  • Use a special application to access the printer and change a number of settings. This method always works and is the preferred method.

Arts Management recommends that you provide a static IP address to the thermal ticket printer. This ensures each time the ticket printer is turned off and back on again, the Theatre Manager's workstations will be able to communicate properly with it.

Practical Automation is a premiere manufacturer of kiosk printer and ticket printer solutions serving the global market for nearly 50 years. Download the latest drivers, software, firmware, and diagnostics for your HP printers from the official HP Support website.

Arts Management recommends that you place the assigned IP address for the printer on a label and stick it directly onto the printer. This will ensure staff members can easily identify the IP address of the ticket printer to Arts Management in case there is a problem with ticket printing and some troubleshooting may need to happen.

Finding out Practical Automation Ticket printer current IP address
  • Turn the ticket printer on holding down the [F0] button on the printer.
  • This prints a ticket with information about the printer and it's IP address. The factory default is usually 192.186.1.1

It covers the complete online shopping workflow. So there is lot of back and forth between server and client, lots of validations built into it to give you a complete experience to practice the scenarios you might find in real time projects. Tools:. Selenium Web Driver. Java. TestNG. Tested functionalities:. Create new account form. One driver used for all wide format 38 Series printers: - paper widths 61/2 up to 81/2 inches (165mm to 216mm) - Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7.

Option #1 - Using the Practical Automation Tool

Printer
  1. Download the installer for the Practical Automation Tool from http://www2.artsman.com/Software/PANetworkUtilityVB-1.1.zip.
  2. When the download is complete, extract the ZIP file into a new folder anywhere that is easily accessible.
  3. Open the folder.

    There will be a number of files.

  4. Open the folder labeled Package and find the file labeled setup.exe.
  5. Double click on the setup file to run it, and complete the installation.
  6. After the installation is complete, return the previous level in the folder that the Practical Automation Tool was extracted to.

    Do this by pressing the Back button or the Up button.

  7. Setup the Practical Automation Printer, power it up, and connect it to the network via a hub, switch or router.

    If a hub, switch, or router is not available, a crossover cable between another computer and the printer will be needed. A crossover cable is not a standard ethernet cable. It has a different pin configuration and is used to connect servers to servers or routers to routers - not machines or printers to routers. Macintosh computers can auto-negotiate standard ethernet cables into crossover cables, but Windows machines cannot. If at all possible, use a hub, switch or small router to create your own small network of computer to router / router to printer configuration.

    The default address of the printer is 192.168.1.1, (which is a commonly used IP address). Make sure that the printer will not conflict with something else on the network before powering it up. If another device is using the same IP address, it is recommended that you use a crossover cable to another computer rather than hooking the printer into the network.

  8. In the Practical Automation Tool folder, double click on the PANetwork program to start it.
  9. At the top of the screen, enter the IP address 192.168.1.1, and then click the Ping & Get Printer Info button.

    This will connect you to the printer.

  10. Near the bottom of the screen, click on the Change IP Address tab.
  11. Change the IP address and subnet mask as necessary.
  12. Click the Update IP Address using FGL Command button.

    Once the settings are saved, the IP address at the top of the program will need to be changed to reflect the new IP address, and to re-connect to the printer.

  13. To verify the settings, turn off the printer. Hold down the F0 button and turn the printer on.

    A ticket will print containing the IP address of the printer.

  14. Once everything is set, each user will need to be adjusted in Theatre Manager to connect to the new printer.

    Click here for more information on changing a user's ticket printer settings.

Option #2 - Using a Web Browser

Practical Automation Driver Job

  1. Change the IP address of the computer temporarily to 192.168.1.xx where xx is anything you want except 1 (for the ticket printer is using 192.168.1.1). You may want to take a screenshot or write down your existing settings so you can reset them after you are finished.

    Arts Management recommends that you provide a static IP address to the thermal ticket printer. This can be obtained from your IT Support. Having a static IP address ensures each time the ticket printer is turned off and back on again, the Theatre Manager's workstations will be able to communicate properly with it.


    a) On a Macintosh go to Apple >> System Prefs >> Network,
    b) On a PC go to Network Places >> Properties >> Local Area Connection >> Properties >> TCP/IP >> Properties
    c) Set your Built-In Ethernet to become Manually set at 192.168.1.2 (anything but 192.168.1.1) and subnet of 255.255.255.0
    2. d) Turn off your wireless connection
  2. Setup the Practical Automation Printer, power it up, and connect it to the network via a hub, switch or router.

    If a hub, switch, or router is not available, a crossover cable between another computer and the printer will be needed.

    The default address of the printer is 192.168.1.1, (which is a commonly used IP address). Make sure that the printer will not conflict with something else on the network before powering it up. If another device is using the same IP address, it is recommended that you use a crossover cable to another computer rather than hooking the printer into the network.

  3. Open the computer's web browser, typically either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox or Chrome. Do not use Safari as it will not be effective.
  4. In the address bar of the web browser enter the following IP address: http://192.168.1.1 and press the Enter key.

    A prompt for user name and password should appear. Leave these fields blank and press the Enter key.

    A new page will open showing the Printer Configuration.

  5. Click on the link labeled 'Network' to adjust the IP configuration.
  6. Change the IP to the new static address, and adjust the subnet if necessary.
  7. Click the OK button at the bottom of the screen.

    The word 'Done' should appear to the right of the button confirming the settings are saved.

  8. Click the Apply Settings button to update the printer.

    The printer should reset once the settings have been updated.

  9. Turn the printer off and back on one time to ensure that the settings have correctly updated.
  10. To verify the settings, turn off the printer. Hold down the F0 button and turn the printer on.

    A ticket will print containing the IP address of the printer.

  11. Once everything is set, each user will need to be adjusted in Theatre Manager to connect to the new printer.

    Click here for more information on changing a user's ticket printer settings.

  12. Reset the IP settings for your computer to what they were before you started.

Practical Automation Driver Training

Reset the Printer to Factory Defaults

Automation

To reset the printer EEPROM settings to factory default, Press the following key sequence:

  1. On power up, press [F1] to enter Diagnostics.
  2. Press [F0] for Special Functions.
  3. Press and hold [F1] for 5 seconds until 5 rapid beeps are heard.
  4. Release the button and cycle the power.

Click the icon to download the ITX 3000/2000 Printer User Manual.


While learning Selenium can surely be challenging in the shift from manual to automation, starting small and making the effort to be continuously learning will help you become proficient in no time.

CrossBrowserTesting wants to help your team get started with automated testing, which is why we’re creating Selenium 101 guides to teach you the basics. By the end, every software team will want you scripting tests for them.

Practical Automation Driver Jobs

For the first of the series, we’re starting at the very beginning by showing you how to automate a simple login process with Selenium using Python (because it’s one of the easiest programming languages to learn first).

You’ll want to install Python, Chrome Driver, and Selenium before starting. ChromeDriver will come in the form of an executable (Windows) or a binary (Mac/Unix). Those technical details aren’t too important now, but you’ll need the file itself. You can get the latest release of ChromeDriver here. Use the following command to add the Selenium library to Python.

Training

You’ll also need to import some specific modules from Python’s Selenium library. At the bare minimum, you’ll need to do the following:

Finally, we need to actually start a webdriver. We can do so with only one line of code:

Now, we can get started automating a simple task like your website’s login form. Basically what we want to do is navigate to the website, locate the username and password fields, enter your credentials, and submit them to get past your login screen. You might also want to define a “method” (something you can call repeatedly) so you can reuse it within other tests. It’ll look something like this:

For example, if we were to be automating a Facebook login, it would look something like this:

There’s more than one way to locate the elements of your web application in order to find the username and password fields, and some may not always be available to you depending on the way your webpage was written. You can find elements by ID, as we exemplified, but you can also locate them by name, XPath, CSS Selectors, and more. To read about the different ways to locate elements during your login process, read Selenium’s official documentation.

Some pages use dynamic content (meaning lots of JavaScript!). To handle this effectively, we sometimes need to wait for some event to occur. To check and make sure that the login was successful, you might want locate an element on the page you’d land on after your login form by using a wait. We’ll need a few more components from the Selenium library. With the same example, you could do it by locating an element by like this:

Practical Automation Printer Driver

PracticalPractical automation driver

The above code will wait a maximum of 10 seconds while attempting to find the “Home” button displayed when you first login to Facebook. Again, there are a few different ways to go about this including waiting for an element to be clickable, visible, or present on the page. You can read more about that here.

Practical Automation Drivers

There you have it; this should provide a basic foundation for automating a simple login process with Selenium in Python. Take a look at the rest of our Selenium 101 series to continue on your journey to becoming a test automation master: