User Manual

Table Of Contents
Serial (RS232/USB) Operation
172 Advanced Digital Motor Controller User Manual V2.0 July 8, 2019
The underscore ‘_’ character is interpreted by the controller as a carriage return. This alter-
nate character is provided so that multiple commands can be easily concatenated inside a
single string.
All other characters lower than 0x20 (space) have no effect.
Character Echo
The controller will echo back to the PC or Microcontroller every valid character it has re-
ceived. If no echo is received, one of the following is occurring:
echo has been disabled
the controller is Off
the controller may be defective
Command Acknowledgment
The controller will acknowledge commands in one of the two ways:
For commands that cause a reply, such as a configuration read or a speed or amps que-
ries, the reply to the query must be considered as the command acknowledgment.
For commands where no reply is expected, such as speed setting, the controller will issue
a “plus” character (+) followed by a Carriage Return after every command as an acknowl-
edgment.
Command Error
If a command or query has been received, but is not recognized or accepted for any rea-
son, the controller will issue a “minus” character (-) to indicate the error.
If the controller issues the -” character, it should be assumed that the command was
not recognized or lost and that it should be repeated.
Watchdog time-out
For applications demanding the highest operating safety, the controller should be config-
ured to automatically switch to another command mode or to stop the motor (but other-
wise remain fully active) if it fails to receive a valid command on its RS232, RS485, TCP,
USB or CAN ports, or from a MicroBasic Script for more than a predefined period.
By default, the watchdog is enabled with a timeout period of 1 second. Timeout period
can be changed or the watchdog can be disabled by the user. When the watchdog is en-
abled and timeout expires, the controller will accept commands from the next source in
the priority list. See Command Priorities on page 1 6 7.
Controller Present Check
The controller will reply with an ASCII ACK character (0x06) anytime it receives a QRY
character (0x05). This feature can be used to quickly scan a serial port and detect the
presence, absence or disappearance of the controller. The QRY character can be sent at
any time (even in the middle of a command) and has no effect at all on the controllers
normal operation.