Galil controller

[minrig]

Our main link in our system is to a series of Galil DMC21x3 controllers which operate on some tcp protocol usually accessed through their console program (DMC Smart Terminal). Using the console, you can send commands which look like "TP" (Tell Position) and provoke an integer response in the terminal, giving an encoder position, and likewise send commands for movement etc. I was wondering if there is / could be a way to send commands directly from Mango using a communication driver for this Galil controller. If this is not an easy process, let me know if arrangements could be made for our company to finance the implementation of a driver for this. We are looking to use Mango for all of our systems, if we can get it to work this way. If you are curious about the application, check out www.power-spar.com for details. Mango would be in control of the entire system, and being able to do this internally would mean that we will not have to develop our own external program to deal with this issue.

Let me know what you think,
-Mike

[mlohbihler]

Hi Mike,

We are currently doing similar things for other customers, so it is certainly something we can discuss. It is typically a matter of just adding a new data source. Some initial questions:

1. Do you have a protocol specification for console program, or would this have to be reverse engineered? (The former is preferable by far.)
2. Would the resulting code be proprietary to you?

The answers to these questions should allow us to provide you with a quote for the work.

[minrig]

I do not have the protocol specification, but I do have the c source for the Linux control terminal which drives the communication and would surely contain all that you need to know. It's just a terminal-based command line tool, so it should be simple enough to figure out how it ticks. We would have no reason to want to own the resulting driver, since lots of people may benefit from this added functionality.

Thanks,
-Mike