Comunication COM1: and a CNC milling machine (timeout?)

[dave at b-i-s.org]

Malte,

One thing occurs to me (you may have already done this) is to use a comms program 
to log data coming out of the CNC to a text file and examine it for a protcol. You should 
see the data and it's rate in the comms terminal window. It would also confirm if 
operations are needed on the CNC machine to start data flow.

Good Luck,
Regards,
Dave.

On 18 Sep 2003 at 13:05, Malte Brill wrote:

> Hi Dar, Sarah and all,
> 
> Developing this stack is a bit complicated, as I need to write it in my
> office, compile it and then test it in the company of my father.
> I got the manual of the machine today but have not found any useful hints on
> communication with a PC.
> 
> Quoting Dar:
> 
> >For a quick test, add a second delay before the read.
> I´ll try that. The Problem might be that the Stack needs to wait until one
> hits the save button on the machine to receive the data. So the time span
> might be different each time the machine sends its data.
> 
> >Also, for your testing you might want to replace numToChar(13) with
> >"<cr>" and numToChar(10) with "<lf>" to make sure you understand what
> >data you are really getting.
> 
> Thanks for the tip.
> 
> >I suspect what Malte is running against is that the mill had no time to
> >respond.  A short delay might provide some or all of the response.
> 
> That´s what I guess too.
> 
> Quoting Sarah:
> >You might want to try out my Serial test stack - available from my web
> >page at
> ><http://www.troz.net/Rev/>
> >I have just updated it so that it allows you to select termination
> >characters i.e. whether sends should end with CR (ASCII 13), LF (ASCII
> >10) or CRLF and the same for receives.
> >I think it will solve your reading problem, because it doesn't do a
> >single read, but reads continuously as long as the port is open,
> >reporting whenever it gets any data.That´s an interesting approach.
> I had a look at your stack, but couldn´t test it with the mill yet, as I
> disturb the production process every time I try testing the stack and they
> are really busy today.
> When I would use the method of testing if there is data sent, how would I
> know that the transmission is done?
> Could I try "listening" to the port until data is sent and then read until
> EOF? Or would I need to write a stop handler to terminate reading when no
> more data is sent? 
> >One other thought: you probably
> >have to send a command to the milling machine first, to tell it to send
> >it's data and which data to send.
> I don´t hope so. The documentation on the mill is very bad. They only speak
> of backing up to tapes or use their software for DOS, written by a company
> that has vanished in mid 90s.
> 
> Dar:
> >I wish you the best.  Would you be willing to let us know how this
> >works out?
> 
> Thanks a lot. :-)
> I will have to do further testing on reading and I hope I am courages enough
> to send the data back to the mill, once I have read the data. I hope I don´t
> kill that thing somehow...
> I´ll keep you posted anyway...
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Malte
> 
> 
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