LabScribe Serial Device Interface

The Serial Port Device Parser has some preset configurations that can be used to setup the device such as for the Mettler Toledo scale.

Setup the serial port to connect to the device, according to the device specifications.

Serial Devices operate in 2 modes, continous or single value.

In Single Value mode, the computer sends an Ascii command to read the value. For example for a Mettler Toledo scale, one needs to send an ‘S’ followed by ‘CR’ and ‘LF’. So for a Mettler Toledo scale, enter ‘S’ in the text area and select the CR and LF check boxes, if you want faster output, use ‘SI’ instead of ‘S’.
In Continuous mode, we still need to send the device a command to start the recording. For Example for a Mettler Toledo scale, for continous mode one needs to send an ‘SIR’ followed by ‘CR’ and ‘LF’. In this mode we also need to have a stop command to tell the device to stop transmitting data. For the Mettler Toledo Scale that is ‘@’.

When the device receives the command from the computer it replies back with a string containing the value. In continuous mode, the device continually sends the updated values.
The Reply Parser reads the reply string and reads the value in the string.
Ignore until value tells the parser to ignore all characters in the string until it finds one of these characters. For the Mettler Toledo scale, we tell the Parser to ignore all characters until +-1234567890, ie: until it finds a number in the string.
Extract Until value is used to find the end of the number. In the case of the Mettler Toledo scale, this value is ‘ ‘ or a space. The parser will read the number until it reaches a space.
The Min. # of Bytes is used to make sure that the parser waits until it has received enough bytes of data.