Has anyone been able to come up with some code to interface between the APC products and Labview? I have not been able to get this to work.

[Bullet]

Any help would be great.
Here are the guidelines that APC sent me.


http://eu1.networkupstools.org/protocols/apcsmart.html

Chris

[johnsold]

I do not have any code, but after looking at the link, it does not seem like it should be any more difficult to talk to these devices than to any other poorly documented serial device. Some trial and error will likely be required.

I would start with a simple Write to Serial Port.vi and a Bytes at Port property node followed by a Read Bytes from Port.vi and see which commands your UPS recognizes. Do this testing with a non-critical load attached to the UPS! When you are confident you can talk to it, then develop a program to meet your overall needs. A state machine architecture with the serial communication in a separate parallel loop works well. Pass commands and data between the loops with queues.

Lynn

[Ben]

The following link into the Info-LabVIEW arcieves may help.

http://messages.info-labview.org/2002/03/20/16.html

Trying to help,

Ben

[Donald]

Another option is suggested in another link in the InfoLabVIEW archives (http://messages.info-labview.org/2001/10/10/04.html) and it will lead you to check out the downloads page at http://www.warwicktech.co.uk

[Bullet]

I looked at that also. All it does is interpert the last line in the log file for powerchute plus. I did not want powerchute running in the background. Thanks anyway.

[JLS]

Hello,

I would only add that you should take care when using the Bytes at Port property when reading; on modern PCs the LabVIEW execution time from your write to the instrument through the Bytes at Port may be much faster than the full transfer time of the characters written back by the instrument. The result is that you will not receive all of the characters sent. In general, however, it protects against reading more bytes than are present (especially when the use of a termination character is disabled) and therefore can reduce timeout errors.

Thank you,

JLS