Download Turbo Accessories Software
Turbo Accessories is software you may
freely download and freely update online at any time. It contains the
database and is the brain that powers all of Turbo Accessories
functions. There are
no installation codes or fees of any kind required to operate this
software. If you have a Wickets system installed, just add the station
hardware associated with each of the modules, download this software
and you will be on your way. You may certainly download the
software and poke around in it to understand it better before making a
purchase of the hardware for any of the stations.
Installation Instructions
Use these steps to
download and install Turbo Accessories:
1.) Click the Download button
above or the link to the right to download the file
TurbAccInstall.zip from our server. It contains all of the
installation files. Save it to your Desktop... were we will use it.
2.) Open the zip file by
double-clicking it to view its contents. Find and double-click file
setup.exe to install Turbo Accessories on your computer. Note:
To perform this step, the account of the person currently logged on to
your computer will likely have to be setup with "computer
administrator" rights.
3.)
If you have a Window Vista operating system, check the
special note below before continuing.
4.)
Once you have installed the software, start the application by
clicking Start - All Programs - WTurbAcc and then click the
icon for the application.
5.)
Create a
shortcut icon on your desktop by right clicking the icon,
selecting "Send To" and then selecting "Desktop (create
shortcut)". You may start Turbo Accessories by
clicking the desktop shortcut.
Computer Setup Instructions
There are two special setup
considerations you must take care of to ensure
smooth operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as the remote installed
stations are dependant on the Turbo Accessories Computer for checking
UserID databases and configuring messages to display. First, as you are likely
already aware, Windows normally comes setup to automatically shut
down your computer after a period of time with no mouse or keyboard
activity. So, we must prevent any kind of automatic sleep,
hibernation, or shutdown. Second, when your computer reboots after
a power outage you likely won't be standing nearby
to click the right icons to start Turbo Accessories running. So, we
must setup your computer to automatically start Turbo Accessories
whenever it reboots.
(Note: the instructions below are
specific for Windows XP. The organization of these controls varies
somewhat for Windows 2000 and Windows Vista, so just let these instructions
serve as a functional guide.)
Prevent Shutdown:
To prevent automatic shut down of your computer after a period of time
with no mouse or keyboard activity, do the following steps:
1.) Right-click the desktop
screen and choose Properties, then click the Screen Saver
tab, then click the Power button in the Monitor Power frame
near the bottom.
2.) You may allow the monitor to
turn off after a period of time with no consequence to operation your
Turbo Accessories stations. We recommend selecting "After 30
minutes" as the setting to turn off the monitor.
3.)
You may allow your hard disks to turn off after a period of time with
no consequence to operation your Turbo Accessories stations other than
about a 5 second delay in response that may be experienced by a
customer when reading his Wicket for the disks to turn on again. We
recommend selecting "After 1 Hour" as the setting to
turn off hard disk.
4.)
Set both System Standby and System Hibernate to "Never".
This computer needs to stay awake!!!
5.)
On the Advanced tab screen we recommend selecting
"Shut Down" for the action to take when the power button is
pressed. It is a good thing to get a fresh reboot of the system now
and then and this is one way to make sure Windows cob webs are
cleared out at least once in a while. We recommend that you select
"Hibernate" for what to do when the sleep button is pressed.
6.)
On the Hibernate tab screen we recommend checking the box to
Enable Hibernation.
Automatic Start:
To enable automatic start of Turbo Accessories when your computer is
rebooted after a full shutdown or after a power outage do the
following steps:
1.) Earlier in step 4 of the Installation
Instructions you created a desktop shortcut for Turbo Accessories. You
will now need to place it (or a copy of it) into the Start
Menu\Programs\Startup folder for Turbo Accessories to
automatically startup when your computer reboots after a power outage. To find
the Start Menu folder, do a right-click on the Windows Start button
(lower left corner of the screen) and then select Explore. When Windows Explorer opens, it always opens
to the Start Menu folder. Beneath it, open the Programs folder, and
then find and open the Startup folder.
2. Either drag-and-drop the
shortcut icon from you desktop into the Startup folder, or copy it and
paste it into the Startup folder. Now when your computer
reboots, Turbo Accessories should just automatically run... even if
you are busy snoozing or just enjoying a good beer down at the fishing
hole... carry on soldier, its all good!
Turbo
Accessories Setup Instructions
Once you have setup the computer
and started Turbo Accessories, then click on the
Setup button on the
main screen (shown on the computer pictures above) to open the screen
shown to the right below. This section will address only the general
considerations of setting up Turbo Accessories. Detailed setup for
each of the three
 field
installed modules (Jackpot, Redemption, and Night Access) will be
documented on their individual detail pages. Follow these steps:
1.) Modules: In the upper
left frame, select the Turbo Accessories Modules that you wish to
enable. The Wickets Jackpot Module is the only one enabled in the
screen shot. As you enable or disable these modules, you will find
serial ports are enabled accordingly, additional setup buttons along
the bottom of the screen are enabled accordingly, and various buttons,
lists and frames are also changed in the main screen as well.
2.) Screen Passwords:
You may separately protect access to each
screen with a password. All screens have some function that either
affects the operation of your system. If all employees are trustworthy,
or nobody else has access, then you may decide not to use any
passwords at all. Just click the pop up
Keypad button for the
password you want to set. Set it to zero if you want no password at
all. If the Setup Screen is password protected, then the passwords
will be replaced by ##### characters to prevent straying eyes from
seeing them. However, you may click the
View Passwords button above
and enter the Setup Screen password to show the real values of the
passwords.
3.) Site
Division: You may operate multiple field site installations
using the same SiteID and view all
of the data back on a central office computer. To do this you must
set a Site Division value for each field site installation to a
value greater than zero and different from one another. The Site
Division value for the central office computer is always set to
zero. If you change the Site Division value of a field installation
site at a later time, no data is lost because the Site Division
value is only used in the process of naming the data files that are
exported (downloaded) to your
USB Flash Drive for the purpose of
importing (uploading) it to your central office computer. However,
you must delete the files associated with the prior Site Division on
the central office computer.
The Division number is located in the file name following the
right-most dash in its name. All data export files contain the full
history of the particular site. Data transfers may be made from the
Registration screen... registration information from the central
office computer gets transferred to the site division computers and
history data from the site division computers gets transferred to the
central office computer.
4.) Serial
Ports: In the upper right portion of the screen, select the
serial ports for the enabled modules by clicking
+
or
-
buttons.
The text box associated with each will tell you which port is selected
and what its status is, including
OK if
it can communicate with a device,
NoData
if nothing is responding,
Conflict if the port is assigned elsewhere,
Invalid
if the port does not exist on the computer, or
Disabled
if it is turned off. This status is also shown on the main screen of
Turbo Accessories so you can see instantly if the computer is talking
to all of the station devices. Many newer computers do not have a
9-pin serial port connector anymore and you must instead use a
USB (universal serial bus) adapter to
convert a USB port to a serial port. Generally you must use an
installation disk with a USB adapter to have it be recognized by your
computer. When it is recognized it will be assigned the next available
COM port number on your computer. Note that this will be tied to the
physical USB connector it is plugged into... so if you plug it in a
different USB port your computer will assign it a different COM port
number.
5.) Screen
Access Timeout: Particularly if you have password protected
screens, you probably want to enable the automatic exit timeout for opened screens. The timeout is set to
"Never" in the example
screen above. The timer is reset when any of
the buttons or text boxes on a screen are clicked or otherwise used.
6.) AppID
And SiteID: In the lower right frame you need to set the AppID
by clicking the down arrow in the drop-down list box and selecting the
market application consistent with your Wickets Administrator settings
and then set the SiteID and Alt.SiteID information using the pop up
Keypad also
consistent with your Wickets Administrator settings.
Note: If
these settings are not correct, your Wickets will be rejected by the
Wicket Readers in each of the connected stations.
USB to Serial Port
Adapter Warning Note
If you are considering using your
own USB to Serial Port Adapter, please beware that some don't function as well
as might
be
expected. Some just do not transfer data in a sufficiently timely
manner for IDX real-time software applications, and some of them will
not re-initialize themselves after the computer has gone through a
Standby or Hibernate cycle. When the adapter does not get
re-initialized after Standby or Hibernate modes then Windows will
report to our software that the selected serial port is not valid. You
have three solutions: 1.) if you have an adapter that
malfunctions as described you can unplug and plug it back in to
re-initialize it... that may eventually get tiresome, or 2.)
you can choose to always use a full shutdown and restart sequence by
disabling Standby and Hibernate in the Control Panel -
Appearance/Themes - Display - Screen Saver - Power screen, or better
yet 3.) make sure you get a Serial Port Adapter that functions well to
begin with.... just buy the ones sold by IDX. The tables below list our
experience with a variety of units... buyer beware!
|
USB to Serial
Port Adapters That Work |
|
Manufacturer |
Model |
Comments |
| Byte Runner |
PL-4COM |
Single USB port converts to 4
serial ports. |
|
Cables Unlimited |
USB-2920 |
Single USB port
to single serial port. |
|
USB to Serial
Port Adapters That DON'T Work |
|
Manufacturer |
Model |
Comments |
|
Belkin |
F5U109 / N10117 |
Port is invalid (does not
re-initialize itself) after Standby or Hibernate. |
|
Micro Innovations |
USB610A |
No LEDs - Some
blue screen of death in XP - no Vista support. |
|
Keyspan |
USA-19HS |
Some blue screens of death in
Win2K and freezes in WinXP |
Window Vista Special Note
- Pesky Run-Time Error #75
Windows Vista has imposed new access control restrictions with its
User Account Control (UAC) utility in order to protect your
computer from application software that may want to surreptitiously alter
files on
your computer. Turbo Accessories
needs to save and update files during its use, and thus must be given
special permission to do so or you will surely encounter Run-Time Error
#75. When this happens, Turbo Accessories will terminate. THE
GOOD NEWS IS that if you have already taken care of this for one
other application, such as Wickets Administrator, you will not need to
worry about it again for Turbo Accessories.
Please
Click Here for detailed
instructions on how to deal with the new Windows Vista UAC so that
Turbo Accessories can create and modify the files it needs for its
operation. Windows XP
and Windows 2000 do not have the problematic UAC. In short, to install
the program on your computer you will need to be logged in as an
administrator. Then, to prevent the UAC from causing problems you will
need to either specifically change the properties of the program
file C:\Program Files\Idx\WTurbAcc\WTurbAcc.exe to have
administrator privileges, or disable the UAC in Control Panel –
User Accounts.
|
