chainway-serial

Asynchronous Python library for the Chainway UR4 fixed UHF RFID reader, over RS-232 and TCP, built on serialx. Requires Python >= 3.14.

uv add chainway-serial

or:

pip install chainway-serial

import asyncio

from chainway_serial import ChainwayClient


async def main() -> None:
    async with ChainwayClient("socket://192.168.99.200:8888") as client:
        print(await client.get_version())

        async for tag in client.inventory():
            print(tag.epc.hex(), tag.rssi, tag.antenna)


asyncio.run(main())

Scope

Protocol status

The wire protocol is reverse engineered from the vendor Android, Java and Windows SDKs, cross-checked against the vendor's official protocol document and the native libraries. Every command the sources assign to the UR4 is implemented, including the module-level subset and the native library catalog, with three gaps: opcodes 0x30 and 0x97, which each carry two conflicting meanings in the sources, and the 0xF0 imager settings with undocumented payloads. No command has been verified against live hardware yet. The complete byte level reference, with every decoded payload layout and the unverified items, lives in docs/protocol.md. When a reader is available, uv run python scripts/probe_chainway.py socket://192.168.99.200:8888 exercises the read commands that need no tag in range and writes the responses to captures/.

While a continuous inventory runs, the reader answers no command except stop inventory. The client models this: other commands raise ChainwayInventoryActiveError until the scan ends.

Documentation

The full documentation is on Read the Docs.