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        Serial Port Solution >> Serial Port Control >> Serial port control from Excel
        
(Message started by: rodp on Apr 18th, 2008, 2:56am)
Title: Serial port control from Excel
Post by rodp on Apr 18th, 2008, 2:56am
Hi All,

I'd like to make use of this software but before I go ahead and purchase it, does anyone (or Fabultech themselves) have any examples of how to utilise it from within Excel.  I'm quite familiar with VBA but don't know where to start with this sort of activex control.

I'm essentially wanting to control an LED display unit from excel.  The manufacturer has kindly provided a document giving protocol details of the unit.  See below for a bit of the document.

Basically, using the Activex control, how would I send a command to the unit and how would I recieve / interpret a command returned from the unit (if there is one - would presume would need a timeout of sorts)

Many thanks in advance for your help

RodP

------------------------------

4.2 Message / Control
There are 6 kind of message / control transfer
- Real Time Clock Setting
- Sending Page Message
- Sending Schedule
- Sending Graphic Block
- Delete => Page
        => Schedule
        => All
- Sending Default


Format :
PC -> MCU:  <IDXX> Data packet CS <E>

'<IDXX>' :ID of the designated LED board
<, I,D & > are ASCII character “<”, “I”, “D” & “>”
XX denotes the ID of the designated LED Board
Values are two ASCII character from 00-FF

'Data packet' denotes data content of this transmission string

'[CS]' denotes the Xor Result of the data content(Data Package).
[,C,S &] are two ASCII character from 00-FF

'<E>' Denotes the Ending code of transmission
<,E & > are ASCII character “<”,”E”, and “>”



MCU -> PC: ACK /NACK /No Response

1. ACK : Message with the correct Xor Result for the designated ID is
received

2. NACK : Wrong xor result for the designated ID is received

3. No Response : ID not match (Message for another LED on the same transmission line) or data format is not recognized.

---------------------------------
Title: Re: Serial port control from Excel
Post by Andrew on Apr 18th, 2008, 7:05am
Hello,

Thanks for detailed info.

OK, we'll send you MS Excel example by email.
Title: Re: Serial port control from Excel
Post by rodp on Apr 21st, 2008, 2:57am
Hi Andrew,

Thanks in advance for your help.  Looking forward to the email.

RodP