The device menu is used to manage the attached device. The following is a description of each menu item.
Connect to the attached device using the USB port. The USB interface is supported by the installed USB drivers to establish a VCP (Virtual COM Port) connection. Once the USB cable is plugged in the computer will assign a VCP port number to the device (see Software Installation for details).
Clicking 'Device>Connect>USB' will open a USB Connect pop-up box. The VCP port assigned by the PC must be chosen from the drop-down list.
If the 'read config' checkbox is selected the device configuration will be read automatically when a successful connection is made.
Make sure the hardware mode switch is set to 'GUI' and click OK.
Once the connection is made a message is displayed in the status bar. The other Device menu items are enabled and the Connect menu item is disabled. The Connection Status is set to 'connected'.
To connect to the device from the SS20 GUI click Device > Connect > USB. A popup window will appear. Select the VCP com port number assigned by the computer from the drop-down list. If desired, check the Read Config check box to automatically read the settings from the device once connected. Click OK to connect.
Close the connection to the attached device. If the Monitor window is open it is closed. The Connect menu item is enabled and all other Device menu items are disabled. The Connection status is set to 'not connected'.
Request the device to do a soft reset. This is equivalent to cycling the power on the device or asserting the reset pin. The device is disconnected with the same action as the Disconnect menu item.
Read, write, and initialize (set to default) the configuration stored in the device's flash memory.
Read the current firmware version number from the attached hardware. Click the 'Close' button to close the Info window.
Displays the Hexidecimal data traffic passing through the SS20 in a scrolling pop-up window. See appendix for more information. The Data TAP window has a File and View menu.
The File menu is used to save messages displayed in the monitor window to a file. You can also read the file and append to it.
These files normally have the '.txt' extension and contain a sequence of messages in text format. Any text editor can be used to read this file.
The first characters in each line indicate the input port the transaction came in on (eg. P1 = COM1) and the direction of traffic as seen at the SS20's output port (Tx = request, Rx = response), followed by the message length in bytes (L= x), and then a hexadecimal dump of the message.
After the transaction is complete a transaction time in milliseconds or timeout is displayed.
The following is a description of each menu item.
New | Clear the monitor window. |
Open | Navigate to and read an existing message file. |
Append | Append all monitor window message to the last message file that was opened. If there is no such file then the action is the same as selecting the 'Save As' menu item. The messages are appended to the file navigated to. |
Save | Write all monitor window messages to a file if the file has been previously opened either in this session or a previous session. If there is no such file then the action is the same as selecting the 'Save As' menu item. |
Save As | Navigate to a file and write all messages in the monitor window to the file. The file can be either a new file or an existing file. |
Close | Stop diagnostic output and close the monitor window. |
The view menu is used to control monitoring of the device's traffic.
The following is a description of each menu item.
On | Start logging traffic in the Data TAP window. Hardware mode switch must be set to 'TAP'. |
Off | Pause logging traffic in the Data TAP window. Allows changing of GUI parameters without closing the Data TAP window. |
Wrap | Word wrap each line to fit within the monitor window. If word wrap is off then you can scroll the window horizontally to see more of each line or the window can be resized by grabbing the edges pr corners of the window. The window can be resized with word wrap on as well. |