Async Serial example

[AzeoTech]

1) for any serial (or ethernet) device you have to create a "device" in DAQFactory.  A serial device in DAQFactory consists of a port (like COM1 or 10.0.0.1) and a protocol like Modbus.  In your case, the protocol will be "NULL Protocol" because you are going to script your own.

 

To create this device, go to Quick -> Device Configuration in the main menu and select New Serial / Ethernet Device.  Give the device a name that makes sense to you, then click on New Serial Port to create the port.  Enter the comm parameters and give the port a name.  Then select NULL Protocol and hit ok.  Now you have a serial "device".  For the script I'm going to assume you called it "myDevice" though I suggest something more descriptive

 

2) create 10 channels to hold your ten values.  Each channel should be Device Type Test, A to D with a Timing of 0.  The History should be big enough to hold however much data you want to trend.  At 30 second update for a week, we are talking 720 data points a day = 5040, so I'd set the history to like 10000.  The other parameters can be left at their defaults.  For the script I'm going to assume you called the channels "chan0", "chan1", etc though again I suggest more descriptive

 

3) create a sequence to get the data.  The script would look something like this:

 

device.myDevice.purge() // clear out anything in the comm buffer
private string sdatain
private string datain
while(1)
   try
      sdatain = device.myDevice.readUntil(13)
      datain = Parse(sdatain, -1, ",")
      if (numrows(datain) != 10)
         continue // didn't get a full row
      endif
      chan0.addValue(datain[0])
      chan1.addValue(datain[1])
       // ... etc for the 10 channels
   catch()
      ? strLastError // only keep this line during debugging otherwise you'll get a bunch of timeout errors
   endcatch
   delay(0.2)
endwhile

 

 

4) run the sequence.  If you still have that ? strLastError you'll likely get a timeout error in the Command/Alert every second.  But it is good to have just in case you have a typo in the rest of the script.  Once the script works reliably, comment out or delete the ? strLastError line.

 

Data should now arrive in those channels which you can then plot or log or do whatever you want with.