SICK TIM310 and Compact Rio

[morm]

Hi,

I am trying to communicate with a SICK TIM310 through a Compact Rio 9076. Does anyone have any drivers as I have read that the 200 series drivers don't work. If anyone has any information it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

morm.

[DocRuss]

*UPDATE* We have got somewhere with this but could really use the help of people more familular with USB communications in LabVIEW. At this stage we are just going for it working in LabVIEW, we will tackle putting it on the RIO later.

After looking at the tutorials and examples we have created an NI driver and got the LIDAR interfacing with MAX. We have also looked at the information flow from the software the company provides and the device (when their driver is associated with the TiM310), confirming that it is just a single command that needs to be sent and it will then send back the required information (it sets itself up on power up). According to the documentation provided by SICK and the terminal they provide (which shows the communications between their software and the TiM310) this command is either <02>sRN LMDscandata<03> or <STX>sRN LMDscandata<ETX>. I believe the difference between <02> and <STX> may have something to do with whether it is in hex or ASCII. We have also determined that it is the bulk pipeline that needs to be used and the devices does not have an interrupt pipeline.

The problem is that while the device returns data when using the SICK software and driver it does not when using MAX or the examples in LabVIEW, even though it is recognised by MAX and the write commands are sent without error and a byte length for the write is returned. We have tried the command with both types of start and end charters (within the <>'s) and even without but with no success. We have even tried converting the command to hex and putting that in but it did not work (incidentally it was 02 73 52 4e 20 4c 4d 44 73 63 61 6e 64 61 74 61 03, tried both with and without the leading and trailing 02 and 03, with and without the spaces).

Does anyone know what we are missing? It is like we are writing to the wrong place or using an incorrect port or something because while the SICK terminal shows the command to the Tim310 and then it's response only the command is shown in the NI communications monitor, the Tim310 never responds.

Thanks in advance.

[DocRuss]

*UPDATE* We got it working. The 'trick' was to use the hex code for the start and end symbols preceeded by the backslash (ie \02 at the start and \03 at the end). Really simple once you know but really hard to work out if you do not.

Our current problem is that the LIDAR is not recognised by MAX when it is pluggesd into the cRIO. We know it is no a problem with the USB port as we can detect a mouse when it is connected. We also know it is not a power supply problem as the LIDAR has an external power supply (i.e. it is not bus powered). Any suggestions?