Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Andrew Johnson <[email protected]> · Fri, 24 May 2013 15:15:04 -0500

Hi Rod,

On 2013-05-23 Rod Nussbaumer wrote:
> We have been asked to provide support for a device that communicates
> serially using packets of binary data. Ordinarily for such tasks I would
> use streamDevice, but the command protocol for this device (a CPI RF
> amplifier) is all binary, not strings, and even includes the requirement
> to byte stuff when framing characters are in the packet payload, as well
> as compute checksums on the packets.
> Any recommendations about how to approach this kind of problem? There
> are a LOT of different commands required to operate this device.

Should you wish to look at an alternative to Mark's C++ classes and Eric's 
Interpose layer approach, I wrote a driver for the binary DirectNet protocol 
which uses Asyn for serial connectivity but has its own device support.  I 
might not write my own device support nowadays, but this code may give some 
hints on writing your own code that makes use of Asyn serial.  This is fairly 
old now though, so the recommended way of doing stuff like connection 
management has probably changed since I wrote this.
  http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/download/modules/directNetAsyn1-3.tar.gz

- Andrew
-- 
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it. -- Upton Sinclair

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System