Redlion Raw RS232 Comms

[martinez8173]

Hello,

I man trying to use a redlion DA10 converter to read data from a Bronkhorst mini cori flow meter over rs232. I cant seem to get the mapping correct based of their sample code. anyone have and experience with this? Tech support was good but they them selfs said id be a custom script to extract the specific data I am looking for.

 

[drbitboy]

What is the Redlion scripting environment? Isn't it some dialect of C?

I would get summat working from a PC first, where you have complete control of running, opening the port, sending bits, etc. Maybe do summat from a VM running Linux and Python where the guest OS owns the RS-232 dongle.

Once you figure out the protocol in that environment all the hard stuff (make debugging logs etc.) is taken care of, then it is much easier to port to another environment that has less development flexibility.

 

[drbitboy]

Wait a minute, does that flow meter use a custom serial protocol, or does it use Modbus RTU? Because I am pretty sure Redlion can talk Modbus RTU already.

 

[martinez8173]

The meter itself unfortunately was ordered as a dinosaur and uses raw 232 signal and ascII, was going to modbus tcp to ignition from the redlion.

 

[martinez8173]

What is the Redlion scripting environment? Isn't it some dialect of C?

I would get summat working from a PC first, where you have complete control of running, opening the port, sending bits, etc. Maybe do summat from a VM running Linux and Python where the guest OS owns the RS-232 dongle.

Once you figure out the protocol in that environment all the hard stuff (make debugging logs etc.) is taken care of, then it is much easier to port to another environment that has less development flexibility.

Correct its some sort of C code, seems there no easy way and going to have to dig deeper than expected. Is Summat a free software? im unfamiliar with it as well.

Thank you for your response,

 

[plvlce]

Is Summat a free software? im unfamiliar with it as well.

Summat:

1. (Britain, especially Northern England, Yorkshire) Something.

 

[drbitboy]

summat, heh.

yeah, decoding a serial protocol is a bit fiddly, but fairly straightforward to do in something like Python, or even a terminal emulator (Windows used to have hyperterminal, but PuTTY would also work).

Hopefully the protocol is 7-bit ASCII and has start and end delimiters e.g. colon and <CRLF> or similar.

Porting to C will be like porting to assembly i.e. like doing it on your hands and knees.

 

[drbitboy]

Summat:

1. (Britain, especially Northern England, Yorkshire) Something.

Heh, thanks.

We're big fans of ACGAS, the books and both series, have all DVD sets of the first. Robert Hardy was a genius.


"Nobbut" is another one.