This webinar discusses InduSoft's customizable TXRX communication driver. The driver allows communication with devices over serial or Ethernet connections. The presentation covers configuring the driver settings, sending and receiving messages in ASCII or binary format, and tips for troubleshooting communication issues. A live demo is provided to illustrate exchanging data by sending and receiving messages through the TXRX driver.

1. InduSoft Webinar
Customizable Comm Driver: TXRX
June 26, 2014

2. AGENDA

3. Agenda
InduSoft (Andre Bastos – QA Manager)
– TXRX Driver: Introduction
– Configuring the Driver Settings
– Receiving RX messages
– Sending TX messages
– Exchanging information through TX and RX messages
– Live Demo throughout the slides
– Tips/Tricks and troubleshooting
– Q & A

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other Webinar by going to our web site at
http://www.indusoft.com/Support/Video-Library/Webinars

5. TXRX Driver: the challenge
Identifying the need of a custom driver
– Have you ever faced a challenge where you want to
communicate with a device, either using Serial or Ethernet
communications, but you can’t find the right communication
driver that would work with it?
– Examples are:
• Vision Systems/Cameras
• Serial Printers
• Scales
• Barcode Scanners
• RFID Scanners
• Sensors
• Gauges
• Some GPS systems

6. TXRX Driver: Enabling Connectivity
Integrating devices to your HMI project
– As long as these devices have either Ethernet or
Serial interfaces (including USB emulating a COM
port), you can create an interface for these devices
with InduSoft Web Studio using the Customizable
Communication Driver called TXRX
Serial COM PORT
Binary
WiFi
ASCII
Ethernet ASCII

7. TXRX Driver: Capabilities
Features
– Works on any Windows OS, including WinCE, Embedded Standard and Compact,
Servers
– Advanced configuration allows communicating with virtually any device
– Communicates over:
• Ethernet – TCP/IP
• Serial – COM Ports
• Ethernet UDP/IP using Serial Encapsulation
• USB – Emulating a COM Port
– Sends Strings of ASCII Chars, with or without ETX chars, with up to 1024 characters
– Sends Binary/HEX messages
– Receives solicited and unsolicited Binary and ASCII messages
– For receiving, it can be configured for
• Receiving an specific number of chars
• Receiving an ETX (end of Text) char
• Consider the receiving message complete once a certain interval of time is elapsed

8. TXRX Driver: Adding to the project
Inserting the TXRX driver in your project
– On the Development Environment, go to the COMM Tab,
– Right-click on the Drivers folder and select Add/Remove drivers
– Find the TXRX driver, select it and click on the Select button

9. TXRX Driver: Choosing the right Settings
Serial
– Good if the device that you are trying to communicate with has a RS-232, RS-485/422 port
capable or exchanging information
– Also good if the device has a USB connection and a device driver that can emulate a COM
Port. Several Barcode/RFID readers have this capability
– To configure the Driver for Serial Mode, open the Driver Settings and configure the TCP/IP Port
field value to 0 – If you configure any other value there, the driver will act as Ethernet, opening
that specific port
– IMPORTANT: The Serial Communication settings MUST match with the ones on the device that
you are trying to communicate with, which means, the same Baud Rate, Data Bits, Stop Bits and
Parity

10. TXRX Driver: Choosing the right Settings
Ethernet (Native TCP/IP)
– Good if the device that you are trying to connect with communicates over Ethernet
through TCP/IP
– To configure the Driver for TCP/IP Mode, open the Driver Settings and configure the
TCP/IP Port field value to the TCP port value of the device that you are going to
communicate with. Don’t leave it with 0, otherwise, the driver will start in Serial mode
– IMPORTANT: When you configure a TCP Port number, the driver will open that TCP
port in Listening mode when in Runtime mode

11. TXRX Driver: Choosing the right Settings
UDP/IP through Serial Encapsulation
– Good if the device that you are trying to connect with communicates over Ethernet through
UDP/IP
– To configure the Driver for UDP/IP Mode, open the Driver Settings and configure the TCP/IP
Port field value to 0
– Configure the Serial Encapsulation mode to None
– Configure the Device IP Address and the UDP Port Number that will be used on your
communication
– Note: you can communicate with more than 1 device if you configure the IP Address also on the
driver Worksheet, followed by the port number and the pipe char. E.g. 192.168.1.11:9600|

12. RX: Receiving Messages
Concepts
– When the driver is receiving a message, once it considers that the message is complete, it will
load the message into the tag configured on the Driver Sheet
– It is a SLAVE configuration: you DON’T use neither the Enable Read when Idle nor the Read
Trigger fields. The Read Completed field can be used to show that a message was received
– On the driver Settings you can configure a few Settings that will be used both when receiving
and sometimes also when you are sending a message
• ETX – Character that will be used to consider that the message is complete when the worksheet it
configured to do so. Also added to the end of a outgoing message
• Interval between char – this value can be used by one of the possible ways to consider that
message is complete (Header RXTIMEOUT->next slide)

13. RX: Receiving Messages
Headers: RXn, RXTIMEOUT, ETX
– Allows the user to configure the worksheets with the tags that will
receive the messages sent by the device, Solicited or Unsolicited
– You can configure a Standard Driver Sheet with one of the below
headers to receive messages:
• RXn – Used when the driver will always receive the same number
of characters per message.
• ETX – Used when the message will always have one or 2
characters (bytes) that define the End of TeXt. E.g. 0D 0A (Line
Feed and Carriage Return)
• RXTIMEOUT – Used when there is not a specific size of the
message, or a ETX character. Whenever the time between the
bytes are being received is longer than the Timeout between char,
the driver will consider the message to be completed

14. RX: Receiving Messages in ASCII mode
Address field:
– Nothing: the received message will be treated as ASCII written to
the Tag configured on the Tag Field
• NOTE: in ASCII, if the driver receives the byte with the value
0x00, it will consider it the end of the String
Parsing the incoming message
– If you want to treat the message the is arriving, writing part of the
message in some tags, and part in other tags, you can configure
the following parameters:
• L:<n> – Length, in bytes, of the part of the message that will be
written to the Tag Configured in the Tag Field
• S:<char> – In case the message has separators, such as CSV
messages, enter here the Hexadecimal code for the separator.

15. RX: Receiving Messages in HEX mode
Address field:
– H: the received message will be treated as HEX and the byte
values will be written to the Tag configured on the Tag Field
separated by spaces (e.g. 0A 41 42 00 00 0D 0A)
Parsing the incoming message
– If you want to treat the message the is arriving, writing part of the
message in some tags, and part in other tags, you can configure
the following parameters:
• HL:<n> – Length, in bytes, of the part of the message that will be
written to the Tag Configured in the Tag Field
• HS:<char> – In case the message has separators, such as CSV
messages, enter here the Hexadecimal code for the separator.

16. TX: Sending Messages
Concepts
– A Driver Sheet with a String Tag and one of the 2 available Headers will be
the one used to send the messages
– Use either Enable Write on Tag Change or Write Trigger to send the
value from the Tag configured on the Tag Name field to the device
– On the Station field, you will configure which device will receive the
message
– If you configure the ETX field, it will be sent along with the Tag Value
– The Write Completed field can be used to let the user know that the
sending operation has been completed

17. TX: Sending Messages
Header:
– TX: the value of the Tag configured in the Tag Name field will
be sent as a String in ASCII
• NOTE: If configure an ETX char in the Driver Settings,
that value will be sent at the end of the message
– HTX: the value of the Tag configured in the Tag Name field
will be converted into HEX codes, separated by spaces, (e.g.
0A 0B 1F FF FF 0A 0D) and sent to the device

18. TXRX: Receiving after sending
Several times, you may have to first send a message and
wait for the reply..
Use 1 worksheet to Send (TX)…
– Configure a worksheet with a header using either TX or HTX,
– Configure the IP_Address:Port on the Station field
– Decide how you will send (Trigger or Tag Change)
Use another worksheet for Receiving Send (RX)…
– Configure a header with one of the RX options
– Once the TX message is sent, you may expect the incoming
message on the tag configured on that worksheet

19. TXRX: Tips and Tricks
Troubleshooting sending and receiving messages
Sometimes it mays seem that you are not receiving the expected messages.
You may want to use a 3rd party software to make sure that the connection between you
and the device is happening
– For WinXP, you can use HyperTerminal. Using it, you can send messages from
other computer into yours and see if you receive them.
– You can also use HyperTerminal to send messages to the device and see if they
receive it.
This helps you identify if you are misconfiguring something in the driver or if it is
something else, like Firewall, cables, and so forth
– For Win7/8 and newer, there is no built-in tool. Several people use one called
PUTTY (www.putty.org), which can do a lot of the things that the HyperTerminal
used to do
– You can also use Telnet from a remote computer (you have to enable it on the
Control Panel->Add Remove Programs->Turn on and off Windows components

20. Q & A

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