Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Christian Pauly via Tech-talk <[email protected]> · Tue, 18 Jun 2019 12:16:38 +0200

Hi folks

I am struggling with a problem using StreamDevice to control a

Monochromator, which has a binary byte-based communication. Each

(multibyte) message from the device is terminated by a CANCEL byte.

My first try was to specify the CANCEL byte as Termninator or

InTerminator in the protocol file:

Terminator = 24

However: Sometimes the Monochromator transmits the wavelength, and it

does it as High+Lowbyte raw LONG.

For certain wavelengths one of the two bytes is a 24, and this is

interpreted then as termination character, and i get a protocol error.

So i tried without Termination character
(either Terminator = "", or skipping the line completely),
using eg the following IN-statement in the protocol:

goto {
      out 16,"%0.2r";
      in "%(Monochromator:LastStatus)1r",CAN;
}

This works fine, as long as the monochromator does not have to turn far:

The device first sends the status byte, then it turns, and only then

sends the CAN byte to signal end of operation.

This can take up to few seconds, and then i get a timeout error.

So i tried to set the ReadTimeout in the protocol to 10 seconds.

Now it works, but now EVERY IN-command waits for 10 seconds, even if the

transmission was already complete (and terminated with CAN).

Is there no way to define the input such, that StreamDevice only waits

the whole Timeout period if the transmission was not yet complete ???

I also tried to use the ! flag:
in "%!(Monochromator:LastStatus)1r",CAN;

to tell to expect EXACTLY one byte. But despite updating to the newest

StreamDevice2 version, i always get a protocol error

> 2019/06/18 12:04:58.809859 _main_ No converter registered for format

'%!' when using the ! flag.

Any helpful ideas ????

Thanks a lot,
Cheers,
Christian

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System