Pairing a Zebra ZQ520 for use with TAM6 and TAM7

TrackAbout Feature
Feature Name:	Pairing a Zebra ZQ520 for use with TAM6 and TAM7
In Module:	Core Tracking
Short Description	Wireless Printing
Available In:	TAMobile 6 Desktop, TAMobile 6 Rugged, TAMobile Android, TAMobile iOS
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Smartphone setup for Android and iOS devices (TAM7)

At this time, iOS does not support this feature.

When pairing, try to assign a COM port and use the same on all your devices. It is easier to remember an maintain. We recommend using COM 5 or COM9. Please remember that while you may pair a bluetooth printer to a phone, additional configuration steps must be taken inside of the TrackAbout Application to ensure proper functionality.

Android Smartphones

Bluetooth Pairing for Android devices

Youtube Video: Pairing Android device with ZQ500 series
This video gives step by step instructions on pairing a Zebra ZQ520 printer with any compatible Android device

"Tap Pairing" for compatible Zebra devices (TC8000)

For some compatible Android Zebra devices, you do not need to pair using Bluetooth, and can instead save some steps and use "Tap pairing", which is NFC pairing between the two devices.
Youtube Video: Tap pairing to Zebra Devices

Configuring TrackAbout application for Android devices

For detailed instructions please expand this box

How to Pair

Make sure your printer is online and configured for pairing.
Make sure you have Bluetooth enabled on your Android device

Login to TAM7
Open the Hamburger menu and click Settings
Click Printer

If you do not have a printer configured, tap Choose Printer
The app will try to locate devices. You may need to enable location services if prompted.

The application will take a moment to locate nearby devices

Select the printer you want to connect to and click SAVE. Your application should now have a 'print test page' popup

Click Print Test Page

Windows/Rugged Device Pairing (TAM6)

PC/Windows setup

Installing the Zebra Setup Utility and Printer Drivers

In order to communicate with the printer from your PC, you'll need to install the Zebra Setup Utilities package. You can download the latest version here .

This package contains several tools for configuring the printer. Use the Zebra Setup Utilities program and the Zebra Font Downloader.

Install a Printer Driver

Open the Zebra Setup Utilities program.
Connect the printer to your PC via USB.
Click "Install Printer".
Contrary to what the application itself advertises, you will need to choose the option to "Select the printer", and Choose the ZPL version of your printer model, for example, "ZDesigner ZQ520(ZPL)". Click "Next".
The next screen is "Printer Options". The only thing that should be changed here is the port. Scroll to the bottom of the "Available Ports" list and choose "USB001". Click "Next", then on the next screen, click "Finish".

Warning We have had reported issues in testing that connection via windows to this model Zebra printer may break over time. To resolve, uninstall and reinstall the printer driver.

Installing new fonts

Warning If you are not comfortable working with console commands or troubleshooting, skip this step

View Installed Fonts

All Zebra printers ship with a set of 16 standard fonts for Roman character sets and may have additional fonts installed on the flash memory appropriate to the locale. Additionally, after downloading a font onto the printer's flash memory, you'll need to do this to find out the name of the font file on the printer. To view the fonts (and other files) on the printer's flash memory:

From the main screen of the Zebra Setup Utilities program, select the installed printer, then click the "Open Communication With Printer" button. This will show a new window: the top half accepts input and the bottom half shows printer output.
Enter the following command into the top half of the window: "^XA^HWE:*.*^XZ". The "HW" instruction is a directory listing command. In this case you're asking for everything on the E: drive (the printer's flash memory).
Click the "Send to Printer" button in the upper-right-hand corner. The printer will return a listing of all the files on its E: drive, which will include any non-standard fonts.

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Download a New Font to the Printer

In addition to supporting the correct character set (e.g., Cyrillic, Simplified Chinese, etc.), the fonts need to suit the client's delivery receipt template. Many of our current clients use grid layouts on their receipts, which requires a fixed-width (aka monospace) font so that columns line up correctly.

If none of the standard fonts are appropriate and there are no suitable fonts on the printer's flash memory, clients will need to install ("download" in Zebra terminology) an additional font to the printer.

First, identify the font you want to use. It must be installed on your PC, must include the characters you want, and must be a [Unicode font]. As the Wikipedia article says, "The vast majority of modern computer fonts use Unicode mappings." Depending on the client's country's laws, it may be necessary to purchase fonts specifically for use on the printer.

From the main screen of the Zebra Setup Utilities program, click the "Download Fonts and Graphics" button to open the Zebra Font Downloader utility.
Next you're going to open or create a "Memory Card", which is the file format for font download instructions. To create a new one, select "Card/New" from the menu and enter a meaningful name, like the font name (e.g., "SimHei.mmf". Enter a short description and accept the default card size for now.
Add the font. Select "Fonts/Add" from the menu. At this point, you should see the option to "Download All Characters" or "Download Selected Characters". If you do not, you may have inadvertently installed a CPL driver rather than ZPL. If this is the case, close the Font Downloader utility, remove the current printer and reinstall a ZPL driver.
Select "Download All Characters" and click "OK".
Select the desired font from the list and click "OK". You should see a prompt "Font has been added successfully. Do you wish to download it now?". At this point, you've added the font to the memory card, but it is not on the printer yet. Normally you'll have the change the size of your memory card to accommodate the selected font, so click "No".
The bottom panel will display the estimated size of the font in bytes and the bottom status bar will display the size in kilobytes. Make a note of the value in kilobytes.
From the menu, select "Card/Memory Card Information". For the "Card Size" field on the bottom, enter the font size in kilobytes, plus a small buffer (20-100k). Then click "OK".
In the fonts panel (middle left of the window), select the font you want to install.
From the menu, select "Fonts/Download" and agree to the license prompt as long as the font license covers this use. This will begin the download to the printer.

The printer downloads can be quite slow: you can observe the download progress in the windows print spooler (usually available in the system tray when print jobs are queued or running).