Serial interface VC40xx Smart Cameras

Description of the additional serial interface of the VC40xx Smart Cameras.

Hardware considerations

Starting with VC40xx Smart Cameras, the trigger interface allows 4 different uses:

• trigger
• I/Os keypad
• serial interface (VC40xx ONLY)
• High Speed, 3 Channel Encoder Interface

Serial C6 cables for the standard V24 (RS232) interface can be used only with serial VC20xx cameras! The serial interface found on the VC40xx cameras needs a C4 cable, available in length of 5m, 10m and 25m, and with connector on one or on both sides.
Multiple devices can be connected to this interface at the same time, using one or two Y adaptor cables (order no. VK000124).

Using the serial interface

For the time being, the serial interface cannot directly be accessed via the shell (the feature will be available in a future release of VCRT). Yet a serial shell is available as a stand-alone application in the knowledge base (can be downloaded for testing).
!! VC4xxx Smart Cameras from model VC4038 (not VC4016 and VC4018) feature from July 2006 an encoder interface. With these cameras, only the serial input line is active after startup. The serial output line needs to be enabled prior to its use, in order to protect a connected encoder.

The following macro needs to be called to enable the serial output line:

INTERFACE_MODE(SERIAL);

The attached program is an example of how to communicate via the serial interface. Compile it and download it to the camera, then start the program. Open a serial session with your terminal program (for example Teraterm), you will see the string "Hello" transmitted from the camera. Then type any character to the serial interface, you will the the characters on the Ethernet side. Before the program quits it sends a big quantity of data (characters) to the serial interface.

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