Hello,
I am updating 8 test rigs that turn and measure the torque applied to multi-turn valves. For each rig, two serial connections are sent to a PC so I have 16 different devices where 8 devices are one model and another 8 are a different model. My problem is that I need to distinguish which device is sending/receiving information based on both its rig and its model.
The devices in question are Interface's Model 9834 Torque Sensor Indicator and Automation Direct's Model 4850 Stepper Motor Driver. Both of these devices use an RS-232 protocol. I thought that one way of distinguishing between these devices was to send a command to each device that asked for some kind of identifier for the device and compare it to the id of the device that I was looking for. However, after talking to both company's tech support, there is no such identifier command.
My next idea was to route these devices through a cDAQ because I know how to programmatically id the cDAQ through its serial number. However, the only C module that I found which supports RS-232 is only supported by cRIO which is out of my budget.
I am a bit stumped at this point. Does anyone have an idea on how I can programmatically identify which device is sending/receiving information from the PC?
Note: The current program hard codes the com ports that the serial connections are assigned to but this is problematic since the rigs needs to be more mobile and unplugging and plugging these rigs can change how the com ports are assigned.