User Manual

 CA‐NETProtocol
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ENGLISHVERSION
CA‐NETRS‐232RemoteControlProtocol
UpdatedforCA40,CA200z,DAM514
 OCT2013
Thebuilt‐inRS‐232portintherearpaneloftheCAandDAMseriesdevicesallowsfor anexternal
devicecommunication viaa serialconnection. Thiskind of connection uses asyntax which is very
similartotheoneusedintheEclerTP‐NETprotocol:itletsaclientdevicegetfromand/orsetthe
values of several parameters of a CA / DAM device (for instance, the CA40 or CA200z digital
amplifiersortheDAM514audiodigitalmixer),likevolumes,mutes,equalisationtones,etc.
TheRS‐232serialcommunicationmustfulfilthefollowingspecifications:
 Baudrate:  9600 (fixed,noauto‐negotiation)
 Databits:  8
 Parity:  None
 Stopbits:  1
 Flowcontrol: None
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It’snotallowedtohavemorethanonesimultaneousaccessfromseveralclientstothesameCA/
DAMdeviceusingtheRS232connection.
The protocol is simple and direct, syntax‐friendly, making it easy to read, write and modify the
generatedcode.Itisbasedonmessageswithnobegindelimiter:eachmessageisself‐delimitedby
the RS232 packet size, which is defined with a maximum of 80 ASCII characters, and always
includingthecharacterLF(0x0A)at
theendofeachmessage.Allthemessagesmustbewrittenin
CAPITALLETTERS.
To let some control systems (like  EXTRON®, CRESTRON®, AMX®, RTI®, VITY®, MEDIALON®, etc.)
processthemessagesmoreeasily,theCA/DAMdeviceaddsthecharacterLF(0x0A)attheendof
eachmessageitsends.
ThiswaytheclientoftheCA/DAMdevicecanbufferthereceivedmessages
toprocessthem,whenrequired.TheCA/DAMdevicecanalsohandleseveralmessagesreceivedin
asingleRS232packetbyusingtheLFdelimiter.
Theavailable messages are builtwithone ormore fields separatedwithblankspaces (  =blank
space):
<TYPE> [PARAM1] [PARAM2] [PARAM3] [PARAM4][LF]
Thefirstfield(TYPE)definesthemessagetypeandthen,therequiredparametersforit(eachkind
ofmessagerequiresagivennumberofparameters).ThefieldTYPEcanhavethesevalues: