Having trouble evaluating

[mccallum4004]

The first paragraph on the website made it seem like this was exactly the program I was looking for, but I can't seem to get the program to do anything I want.  I can't figure out how to send a file.  Here is what I need to do:

send a series of hex data to a device over an RS232 port (I currently do this by sending files from a data teminal program)
read the response (also in hex - I do this with the same data terminal program)
---now I have to stop and save the output to disk but I'd rather be able to do the following automatically)
parse the response (I do this now with an editor, that parses it into a data structure, and saves it again)
calculate some basic math - sums and averages of vectors
export the result via DDE to another program.

My current software does not like hex, so I am shopping for something that can do this.  Any advice on whether this can be done and if so how do I start with sending a file (or a general hex message - it's always under 100 bytes - over my configured port? 

[Arthur Grasin]

1. Requests. Our Advanced Serial Data Logger software has the "File requests" data query plugin. This plugin can send binary (hex) data from a file. Also you may use the ASCII Data Query plugin and specify your requests there like #01#02Data. This request will send 2 bytes (0x01 and 0x02), then 4 characters (Data).

2. Log files. You can freely configure it on the "Log rotation" page in the settings.

3. Parser. I think that the ASCII Data Parser plugin can parse your data, but I didn't see your data example.

4. Expressions. If the parser will extract your data, then the Expressions plugin can do some operations with the extracted data

5. DDE export. The DDE server plugin will export your extracted data.

All plugins are here: http://www.aggsoft.com/serial-data-logger/plugins/

[mccallum4004]

Thanks for the feedback.  I did download and install the filereq plugin but there does not seem to be anywhere in the Request options dialog to put in a file name.  I'll try it today using the ASCII command - the commands I am interested in using are short enough that that shouldn't be a problem.  It looks like I can clone this configuration and create one for each command. 

My data is a series of hex codes, then little endian short integer vectors, an instrument status byte, and a checksum.  The data packet is always the same length so I think I should have several options for parsing it.

[mccallum4004]

The filereq plugin did not initially install.  It is installed now but doesn't seem to work.  I selected a file - mean32.hex - and then in the status line it reported that it was sending a different file - testfile1.txt - which was a data file rather than a command file.  So it didn't communicate.  I don't need to use this though and the ASCII query works well.  In fact it looks like the best way to send commands is to create a set of configurations for the different commands. 

It is now communicating and receiving data.  My data has some header bytes and then a vector of words in little endian format.  In the parser, I don't see a way to define a vector variable and there also doesn't appear to be any way to select which bytes are most significant.