Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Serial Port on DSS100

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Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 1430) on 10-26-2016, 06:51 AM:

Here's one for the DSS100 experts...
Is there anyway that the serial port can be inhibited such that it refuses to pass the serial commands??
This is a split from my original request re the JSD60 in a drive in & after remote in access was used by the installer & proving that the JSD60 is OK but issues are there with the interface twixt DSS100 & eCNA5
So this is a clutching at straws thought by myself thinking as I drove home as due to technical issues we could not determine whether the DSS100 is faulty OR the eCNA5 is the culprit.

The technical issues are lack of a serial port computer or lappy that runs Win7 & will allow a Sierra wireless hotspot unit to work with it.
The site computer runs Win 7 & works with the Sierra A OK but has NO serial port.
Scrabbled around & borrowed another computer with a serial port from the group who run the DI & was supposedly a Win 7 unit but once powered up turned out to be a Win 8 beast.
No way would it recognise the Sierra unit in a USB slot such as the Win 7 site machine would & the bloody thing had no WiFi card either so could not get access that way either [puke]

Almost a 600kms round trip only to be thwarted by a figgin computer.
We reckon that with a serial machine we can squirt some commands at the eCNA5 & prove that it is OK and the DSS100 is shot or vice versa.

Old technology I know but maybe somebody has experienced a dodgy serial port on a DSS100?? in the past & then where to from there?? [Confused]

Lindsay

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 10-26-2016, 07:35 AM:

A DSS serial port has to be activated in auditorium properties. You should check it, but I doubt it would deactivate there by itself.

USB-Serial converters can be bought from 5US$ up. They can be problematic with certain old software applications, but are usually good enough to catch a few strings from a DSS100 into a standard terminal program. Which is what I would try first - check if the DSS100 outputs anything. Then go to the eCNA.

The Keyspan USB-RS232 converters, while a bit pricey, are the best. But for this application, any cheap one will do. You may need to get a nullmodem/crossed RS232 cable or converter as well.

The eCNA may need proper RS232 signal levels, which cheap USB-RS232 often don't source. Steve may know about that. So when you try to send something to the eCNA through a USB-Serial, make sure you don't fail on that part. Receiving from the DSS100, however, doesn't suffer from that issue.

WIN7 doesn't come with Hyperterminal anymore, but you can copy it from an XP machine or download other simple terminal software. Like SerialTalk from the film-tech warehouse.

http://www.film-tech.com/warehouse/wareview.php?id=1897&category=2

Installing a USB-Serial in WIN7 or WIN8 can be a bit painful as well due to driver signing issues, but you can find procedures on the Net or in the devices documentation.

If you can't dig up an old XP notebook with a serial port (DELLs can be found for very little money), you should make yourself familiar with a USB-Serial. Especially if you have RS232 aware devices to service from time to time.

Never trash an XP notebook with a serial port - you will regret it.

I don't know what you need that Sierra USB Wireless hotspot unit for, but both the WIN7 notebook and the WIN8 notebook most certainly have their own internal WIFI hardware? Or is this Sierra Unit a 3G or other local wireless broadband access-USB-Stick and there's no Wifi on site?

- Carsten

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 10-26-2016, 09:34 AM:

The Keyspan and the Moxa USB to serial adapters are very reliable

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 10-26-2016, 04:49 PM:

Putty is a opens source terminal program that works with serial as well as Ethernet. Never had a problem with it.I recommend it.

Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 1430) on 10-26-2016, 08:11 PM:

Thanks for those responses.

The site has no WiFi at all & the Sierra is what I use for my MacBook Pro & it works equally as well with either PC or Mac.
I was surprised to discover that you can also access the 3G Network via the USB slot...I was always under the impression that was simply for charging only & not for comms at all. Must try that on the Mac & see what it does with that as its is also a 64bit machine as was the Win 8 desktop I dragged to the DI.
The moment I plugged it into the USB slot on the Win 7 site desktop PC it showed up immediately on the desktop. I clicked instal & we were away. No amount of searching on the Win 8 unit could find it on any of the many USB ports.

The Keyspan units look as though they will do the trick & appear not overly pricey...I bought a Thunderbolt to DVI adapter a while back for the Mac Book...cost around $20 AUD & was far from being any good. Thus if the Keyspan does the job the cost of those so long as they work well is worth the $$$ spent. Quite a varied range of prices for the same device on EBay though.

According to the installer who remoted in with TeamViewer the DSS serial port was ticked as being OK & functional. I was not watching the screens constantly as he went thru things as busy extracting the eCNA from the rack to check the RS232 cable continuity pin to pin.

The MacBook has Boot Camp installed so will load Win 7 on that along with Serial Talk & TeamViewer & run them all under Win 7 using BootCamp to switch OS as required.
The site can get by using a normal Dolby playlist make up process as far as projector control is concerned & they will have to select sound manually as they go from N/S to Movie & back again.
Means that they will have to think a bit more carefully when making up a playlist to insert all applicable projector cues rather than what they had before. Those being Start Scope or Flat & End Show & buried in those via the eCNA5 was all the necessary projector & JSD60 cues to switch things over etc.

Now to fiddle with the Mac. [Smile]

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 10-27-2016, 10:32 AM:

I have a couple of Axis USB to serial converters, which seem to work better than some copies which I've seen. The copies usually seem to be blue, while the Axis ones are a sort of dirty yellowish grey colour.

I don't use them as much as I used to as I now have some Ethernet to RS-232/422/485 converters which I tend to use instead. Main advantages, you can easily connect as many as you want to one computer, can be as far away as you want, not limited to the 5m or so with USB.

They can work in several different modes, you can telnet to them, and they then talk serial to the remote device, or you can talk serial to them, and they will then telnet to a remote device with an IP address which has been programmed into them, or if the PC is a windows one then a device driver can be installed which will cause the converter to appear to be a local COM port on the PC, even if it's on the other side of the world, and any software designed to work with a local COM port should work with them, as long as it's not old DOS software talking directly to hardware. I bought mine from Amazon, and have had no problems with them.

I have used RS-485 in a previous job, but do not use it now. Because the converter can be a long way away, with serial used for just the last few metres, RS-422 isn't needed as much as it used to be; most things can use 232.

Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 1430) on 10-28-2016, 04:12 AM:

Thanks for that info Stephen..more to chew over. Can source a similar item locally but at this point I can only see the need for a RS232 unit so have opted for the KeySpan one Gordon mentioned. From what I could see it maintains more correct voltage levels on the RS232 signals which are rather critical on that protocol. Thus have one on order coming here ex USA.

Mac Book will soon have Win 7 & Serial Talk on it & once the USB to Serial convertor arrives will try it out functionally driving a Epson home cinema projector which has a Serial port for comms.
Once proven I will be off again into the wilds & hopefully prove exactly which unit is sick.
From past experiences in processor controlled telephone exchanges sometimes devices may have been "ticked" as being active but were in fact OFF. We had a way to check that via various registers which was clunky & time consuming PLUS downright dangerous as you were reading & writing into an area that with one false move by setting a bit to either a "1" or "0" you could shutdown a 10,000 line system.
[puke]

By chance it was discovered that frequently by telling a device to go "off line" when it was showing as being OK & then again telling it to go back "on line" would jolt it back into action again.
Often for no reason known to us devices would cease to work & doing that set them back in operation.
So first thing next visit will be to turn OFF the Serial comms from the DSS100 & then back on again & see what that does.
[Roll Eyes]

Thanks for that tip Carsten re checking that the Serial comms is set for that Auditorium..I have never noticed that on the screens & cannot find any reference to it in the Dolby manual either. [Smile]

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 10-28-2016, 04:53 AM:

Sorry, I made an error in my post yesterday. The USB-serial adapter which seems to work better than others I have used is Aten, not Axis. Axis were the cameras which we controlled with it at one time.

Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 1430) on 11-17-2016, 07:43 PM:

Been playing with the USB-Serial converter,Keyspan as recommended by contributors on this forum...thanks for that.
Looks to be a good unit & the only Serial device I have at home in my workshop is a Panastereo CSP1200. So with the manual as downloaded from FT got into the serial comms section & there it has gone really strange.
The only command that the CSP1200 will react to when sent from the laptop via the Keyspan unit is the Stat Command :STAT<CR/LF>
No other command sent to invokes any response and the Stat command does show what the thing is set at & every change in a Volume OR Format setting is sent to the laptop.

EG. If set to Optical Stereo I get sent this ^M!FAX168 with 168 being the actual setting on the Vol fader.
If I select Optical Stereo SR from the control panel I get this back ^M!FSX159 & again the 159 is the exact vol setting on the fader.
Those responses are NOTHING like the listed responses in the manual. [Roll Eyes]

There is NO "F" character listed in the manual on FT & I have worked out that M after the F = Mono, A = Dolby A, S = Dolby SR, 1= Non Sync & 3 = Mic & so on.

Hopefully someone might know if there had been a change in responses during the build of these units as this one has the Serial No of 53334..is Ray Derrick still around on this forum at all?
He might be able to shed some better light on whether what I am seeing is correct for this particular serial number.

I am reasonably happy that the Keyspan converter works well so am getting organised to head off again into the sticks & see if the DSS100 is at fault OR the eCNA5 is the culprit. Then the owners can make a decision on what to do next.

But I would like to be 100% sure that the USB/Serial converter is OK as its almost a 500km round trip to find out the thing is telling porkies. [Smile]

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 11-17-2016, 09:31 PM:

You can always wire pin 2 to pin 3 with a bare wire/D9F connector, that will create a loopback/hardwire echo by connecting Tx with Rx.

- Carsten

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 11-18-2016, 12:19 AM:

I have a Keyspan myself and always worked fine with anything. But I had a chance to test a newer one which would refuse to connect to a jsd80 - same laptop, same (updated) drivers.

Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 1430) on 11-18-2016, 01:33 AM:

Carsten, Did the loop back trick before plugging into the Panastereo & as expected whatever I typed into the command line came straight back...sorta proving up that the Keyspan was happy working with Serial Talk. Initially Serial Talk comes up as Hex use.
When I hooked into the Panastereo I began to wonder as what came back looked like gibberish until I twigged it had to be ASCII & so it was.
Subsequent boot ups of Serial Talk all came up in ASCII each time so I did not have to remember to select that again. [Smile]

Whilst waiting for the Keyspan to arrive I bought on impulse a so called "plug & play" USB-Serial device but its not playing at all.
Possibly because I am running this on a MAC using Virtual Box to allow me to use Win 10 to be able to use Serial Talk the converter gets confused at what what OS its working with. Supposedly its compatible with both PC & MAC...one for my "smarter than me" tech guru to ponder over...I gave up trying.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 11-18-2016, 05:49 AM:

Oh, yes, using these converters within virtual environments can be tricky. In general, there are two ways how they can be used:

- The host system installs drivers and creates a COM-Port within the Host OS. This port has to be forwarded to the virtualized OS as a serial Port. It's a special function of the virtualization engine. It has to know about serial ports.

- The host OS is prevented to install/use the device with it's own driver, instead, it is passed into the virtual OS as a USB device, so the virtualized OS sees it as a USB device and installs it's own USB-Serial drivers. That's a bit tricky, as usually the host system will install a driver upon insertion of the USB device automatically, that has to be blocked later when the USB passthrough is used.

Some virtualizing systems allow to use both options, at least for serial ports.

Then there may be issues with the device being USB 1.1, USB2.0, or USB3.0. It's not important for the speed/baud rates (even 1.1 will support all necessary serial rates), but some virtualizing systems do not support passthrough of UB2.0 or USB3.0 devices.

So, have fun with that ;-)

- Carsten

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-18-2016, 07:29 AM:

The CSP1200 has two different serial command sets...the manual on site refers to the v1.0 (and the one that I normally use) but there is the other one that is is more of a shorthand. Which one is used is controlled by one of the dip switches on the CM436. When I'm near my notes, I'll let you know which one.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-18-2016, 09:49 AM:

RESPONSE FORMAT:
Option 1 String format: !Ffmpxx(CR) - 8 characters (Options-A DIP switch 6 = OFF)
Where:
! = Start character
F = Second start character
f = Current format. Possible values are M = Mono, A = Stereo, S = Stereo SR, D = Dig 1, T = Dig 2,
G = Dig3/Mag, 1 = NS1, 2 = NS2, 3 = Mic, V = AV
m = Current Mute status. Possible values are U = Mute active, X = Mute inactive
p = Current Projector status. Possible values are 1 = Projector 1, 2 = Projector 2
xx = Current volume, (two ascii characters) Values will be 00 to 99
CR = Carriage return character

If you put Option-A dip switch 6 on, you'll get the original command set.

Posted by Leslie Hartmier (Member # 7053) on 11-18-2016, 02:25 PM:

Lindsey,

Moxa and Keyspan/Tripp-Lite both have Mac OS drivers for their USB to serial adapters.

As for Serial Talk, there are three serial terminal programs I can think of off the top of my head:
- ZTerm (sometimes has problems with USB to serial adapters) at http://www.dalverson.com/zterm/
- CoolTerm (has a Mac, Linux and Windows version) at http://freeware.the-meiers.org/ and
- CornFlake (Mac-only, and is really quite fancy for a serial terminal) at http://tomgerhardt.com/Cornflake/

Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 1430) on 11-18-2016, 09:27 PM:

Steve,

Thanks you are spot on. Setting that dip switch 6 to ON gives me the original command responses as per the manual except that the thing only responds to the Stat command..it ignores any others. I can live with that as now am quite happy that the MAC with Virtual Box & Win 10 loaded will give me all the access I need at the drive in.
After playing with CSP1200 a bit more last night before you posted that info I had worked out exactly what you had posted for the so called "shorthand" version.
So have proven up the USB/Serial converter to be a goer.
IF the CSP1200 will never take serial commands its not going to bother me in its ultimate use as it will only be working in a manual projector setup looking after my screening room with a 35 & 16mm projector dangling off the 2 solar cell inputs.

Leslie, Thanks for that info re the other couple of terminal programs..well worth a look. I will download the MAC one & see how that functions with the Keyspan running off the Mac OS & talking to the CSP1200 unit..just for interest sake. If it proves reliable it will be a quick & easy way to use the Mac talking serial if I do not need other programs that are Windows based. I have gotten a bit spoilt not having to wait much at all for the Mac Book to boot up & go as compared to Win 10 there aint no comparison which takes its time.
Great forum. [thumbsup]