Reverse Engineer an Instrument Serial Link

[bmann2000]

I have an .exe application that communicates with an instrument.  The .exe includes a GUI with a few configuration options, then acts as a data logger once the instrument is running.

I'd like to use LabVIEW to fully automate this instrument as part of an automated (and un-manned) maufacturing process, configuration and datalogging.  There is no addtional information available from the vendor.

Does anyone have experience to share on the best approach to this type of task?    Attached are data grabs from NISpy and the corresponding data exported from the GUI application.  The setup of the serial link is obvious, but I don't see the data.  Is "...CTk...."  the data in an encoded format?  Would Portmon to similar sniffer software provide more information?

[bmann2000]

how can I extract the NI Spy buffer data to a spreadsheet?

[billko]

No manual/programmer's guide for this equipment?  Maybe it is easier to see the output with Hyperterminal?

[bmann2000]

discovered you can change export options to include buffer data.  Now using match pattern VIs to strip the data from the txt file with LabVIEW.

[billko]

I don't know about you, but I consider these kinds of projects to be some of the most fun - but they have the potential to be very frustrating at the same time.  I'm glad you are working towards a solution.

[Henrik_Volkers]

seems that the device is simply streaming values

try to run this program

if you can see some data in the read string indicator(s) fine 🙂

hit edit-make current values default and save the vi and repost it if you need help in decoding.

[bmann2000]

thanks for the pointers Bill and Henrik.  For anyone who finds this stuff fun, VI attached.........

[Henrik_Volkers]

Arrg still with LV2012

[RTSLVU]

Have you tried a serial port sniffer like PortMon part of the Sysinternals Suite from MS Technet.

[bmann2000]

I've got the data using NI-Spy, did look at portmon tho.  The interesting part now is finding the data, last time I designed a serial link, to avoid having the start byte in my data, I used only a portion of each 8-bytes for data.  When you reverse engineer somone else's work, it's hard to know what part of each byte is actual data, then from that what is low-high, msb lsb etc...