[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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