[AG-TECH] RS 232 control of cameras and projectors
Jon I Johansson
jon.johansson at ualberta.ca
Fri Dec 5 14:23:17 CST 2003
Wow, thank you all for the great information. Here is a
summary of what I got (mostly for myself, but it may
be useful for others):
The problem: increase the available number of serial ports
available to control devices through RS-232. It turns out
that this has plenty of solutions and I've included a few
examples, but I don't have any experience with these products
so entry in this list is by no means a recommendation:
1) a PCI card with built in serial connectors
- available with 2 or more serial connectors
- Moxa Smartio C104H/PCI (4 ports)
- price about $130USD
-
http://www.moxa.com/product/Multiport_Serial_Boards/PCI_Boards/C104H_PCI.htm
- http://www.globetek.com/c104h.htm
- StarTec.com has a bunch of these kinds of cards
-
http://www.startech.com/ststore/itemlist2.cfm?category=p40200&topbar=topbari
o.htm
- there are also ISA versions available but my
computers don't have that kind of slot
2) a USB connection to a multiport Serial adapter
- Digi Edgeport/4 USB to 4 port DB-9 Serial Converter
- list price $399USD but price about $240USD
- http://www.digi.com/
3) a network connected box full of serial ports (up to 32)
(aka terminal servers or network serial concentrators)
- Lantronix ETS8PS (8 ports)
- price about $700USD
- http://www.lantronix.com/products/ts/ets4p_8p_16p/index.html
- Moxa NPort Server Pro
- price $895USD for the DE-308 (8 ports)
- http://www.moxa.com
- http://www.globetek.com/nportserverpro.htm
- Digi products
- http://www.digi.com/products/terminalservers/
To get prices I just did web searchs and took what looked like
an average, these aren't the best prices and your mileage will
vary.
Thanks to Marcia Perry at LBL for sharing software:
LBL has software to do remote camera and video-switcher control.
It's available at http://dsd.lbl.gov/mbone/devserv.
'devserv' is a device server that does all the RS232 communication
to the devices. There is a separate client GUI for actually making
requests to move the devices. devserv will handle daisy-chained
cameras.
For our case I think a PCI card will do the trick so I'll pick
one and try it.
Thanks again,
Jon.
--
Jon I Johansson * Research Computing Support
jon.johansson at ualberta.ca * Computing and Network Services
Tel.: (780) 492-9304 * University of Alberta
Fax.: (780) 492-1729 * Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov
> [mailto:owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Jon I Johansson
> Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 5:54 PM
> To: ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov
> Subject: [AG-TECH] RS 232 control of cameras and projectors
>
>
>
> I'm thinking about connecting our cameras and projectors
> to a computer and controlling them through RS-232 but
> there seem to be some problems with that idea:
>
> I have 4 computers with 2 serial ports each and
> 10 serial connections to make -
>
> 4 projectors
> 4 cameras (sony VISCA)
> 1 Gentner
> 1 Switch
>
> Ok, so the cameras are supposed to be able to be daisy chained
> and I'm left with 7 connections to make. I would really like
> to be able to control all of this stuff from a single machine
> with two serial ports, is that possible? If it is possible,
> is it worth the trouble? The cameras and projectors can be
> controlled with remotes but the operator may be sitting too
> far from a device for that to work.
>
> My limited understanding of serial ports is that they are
> pretty much dedicated to the connected device but maybe
> there is a way around this?
>
> If anyone has done this sort of thing I would appreciate
> their comments.
>
> Thank you,
> Jon.
>
> --
> Jon I Johansson * Research Computing Support
> jon.johansson at ualberta.ca * Computing and Network Services
> Tel.: (780) 492-9304 * University of Alberta
> Fax.: (780) 492-1729 * Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
>
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