Gentec-EO M-LINK - Manual (Page 39)

M- LINK User’s Manual Revision 3.0 33
3.2.6 Data Format in Energy Mode
The M-LINK sends 7 bytes in Energy Mode. The data is terminated by a carriage return, so a carriage
return must not be sent inadvertently. As M-LINK is building the data byte, it checks to see if the byte is a
carriage return. If it is, it decrements it by one and sets a bit in a byte called the correction byte. The
correction byte is structured so that it is always an even value, therefore it can never be a carriage return.
This byte is sent after the 5 data bytes, and then the carriage return is sent.
Byte 1 is the upper 8 bits of the pulse data.
Byte 2 is the lower 4 bits of the pulse data and the upper 4 bits of the range index.
Byte 3 is the lower 4 bits of the range and the upper 4 bits of the period counts.
Bytes 4 and 5 are the remaining 16 bits of the period counts, twenty bits total.
Byte 6 is the correction byte
Byte 7 is the carriage return.
Example with no byte corrections:
The data is 0xA711F01EC2000D
0xA7 byte 6
0x11 byte 5
0xF0 byte 4
0x1E byte 3
0xC2 byte 2
0x00 byte 1, the correction byte
0x0D byte 0, carriage return.
All the following is done in the host application
Byte 1 is the correction byte and is interpreted as follows:
Bit0 is not used, always set to 0
Bit1 set, increment byte 2 by 1, not set, byte 2 is ok
Bit2 set, increment byte 3 by 1, not set, byte 3 is ok
Bit3 set, increment byte 4 by 1, not set, byte 4 is ok
Bit4 set, increment byte 5 by 1, not set, byte 5 is ok
Bit5 set, increment byte 6 by 1, not set, byte 6 is ok
Bit6 set, the ADC returned 0 Counts, ambiguous data