The RS232 works using three elements, one hardware element (Serial COM Port) and two function element (RS-232 Receive and RS-232 Send).
Within the hardware element you must specify standard RS232 properties (baud rate etc.). You must also specify the service type; native if you wish to communicate with another PPA device, Terminal otherwise. The “Terminal Mode” property specifies whether the data should be wrapped with a prompt (easy to use within a terminal) or should be raw (device to device). Then you will need to specify send/receive terminators and separators. The terminator signifies the end of a given RS232 command and the separator is the character used to separate multiple values.
The RS-232 Send element allows you to specify a serial port (the hardware element) and then numerous “Send Values”, this element can be called much like any other action and when it is it will send each value (enclosed within specified pre and post messages) separated via the “Send Separator” specified in the hardware element and ended with the “Send Terminator” specified in the hardware element. The values will be sent in sequential order from top to bottom.
The RS-232 Receive element allows you to specify a serial port (the hardware element), when this has been selected you will be able to specify an “Alias”. In order for an RS-232 Receive to be used it must have a unique identifiable command at the beginning, if no alias is specified then the name of the RS-232 Receive element will be used as the command; if an alias is specified then the Alias will be used as the command. A Receive Separator should follow this and then all values you wish for the device to receive also separated by the Receive Separator and then finished with the Receive Terminator. Then you will specify a list of receive properties/variables, this is where the values will be stored again sequentially from top to bottom as first received to last received.
For example if the Alias was set to “rx”, separator set to comma and terminator set to [CR][LF] and the specified receive value was a text boxes Text property then the following would set the text boxes text value to “Test”:
RS-232 Receive also gives you the option to perform an action once the receive has been completed so you could store a value as a variable and then call an action to display it or modify it with a maths builder before displaying it.
