Ecler CA‐NET RS‐232 - Manual

CA‐NET Protocol
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ENGLISH VERSION
CA‐NET
RS‐232 Remote Control Protocol
Updated for CA40, CA200z, DAM514
OCT 2013
The built‐in RS‐232 port in the rear panel of the CA and DAM series devices allows for an external
device communication via a serial connection. This kind of connection uses a syntax which is very
similar to the one used in the Ecler TP‐NET protocol: it lets a client device get from and/or set the
values of several parameters of a CA / DAM device (for instance, the CA40 or CA200z digital
amplifiers or the DAM514 audio digital mixer), like volumes, mutes, equalisation tones, etc.
The RS‐232 serial communication must fulfil the following specifications:
 Baud rate: 9600 (fixed, no auto‐negotiation)
 Data bits:
8
 Parity:
None
 Stop bits:
1
 Flow control:
None
It’s not allowed to have more than one simultaneous access from several clients to the same CA /
DAM device using the RS232 connection.
The protocol is simple and direct, syntax‐friendly, making it easy to read, write and modify the
generated code. It is based on messages with no begin delimiter: each message is self‐delimited by
the RS232 packet size, which is defined with a maximum of
80 ASCII characters , and always
including the character LF (0x0A) at the end of each message. All the messages must be written in
CAPITAL LETTERS .
To let some control systems (like EXTRON®, CRESTRON®, AMX®, RTI®, VITY®, MEDIALON®, etc.)
process the messages more easily, the CA / DAM device adds the character
LF (0x0A) at the end of
each message it sends. This way the client of the CA / DAM device can buffer the received messages
to process them, when required. The CA / DAM device can also handle several messages received in
a single RS232 packet by using the
LF delimiter.
The available messages are built with one or more fields separated with blank spaces ( = blank
space):
<TYPE> [PARAM1] [PARAM2] [PARAM3] [PARAM4][LF]
The first field ( TYPE ) defines the message type and then, the required parameters for it (each kind
of message requires a given number of parameters). The field TYPE can have these values: