Gilderfluke&Co Sd-50 Audio & Show Controllers - Manual (Page 56)

Sd-50/0, Sd-50/8 or Sd-50/40 Serial Commands
The Sd-50/xx can be accessed through the RS-232 serial port from any computer running just about
any modem or terminal program. The computer you are using doesn’t even need to have any Gilderfluke
& Co. software installed on it.
Most Gilderfluke & Company products can be controlled through their RS-422 Serial ports. Up to 256 different cards
and devices can be attached to the same serial lines, to form a complete RS-422 ‘multi Drop’ network. Anywhere on this
network you can attach operator panels to access and control it, or you can use a telephone or Internet modem so that it
can be accessed from around the block or around the world. Commands can be addressed to a single card on the network,
or all the cards simultaneously. The wire used in a RS-422 network can be run up to a mile, and extended even further by
using devices known as ‘repeaters’.
Gilderfluke & Company products that use RS-232 serial ports work in much the same way as the ones which use RS-
422 serial ports. The commands and features are the same. The difference is that the RS-232 standard limits you to a sin-
gle device attached to each serial port at one time, and limits the wire runs to under fifty feet.
The RS-232 serial data signals from the Sd-50/xxʼs are brought out on a 1/8” three conductor ‘stereo’ socket. Its pin
out and cross connect to the standard serial port on a PC is as follows:
Rxd
Txd
gnd
IBM AT
S e r i a l
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
3
2 (ring)
(tip)
(sleeve)
The mnemonic for remembering the connections are: Ring = Receive, and Tip = Transmit.
The Sd-50/xx use RS-232 ports on their fronts, which share these limitations, and RS-422 (receive-only) ports on the
rear which can be used as part of a multidrop serial network.
Touch screen operator panels are one of the easiest and most flexible types of operator interfaces available for access-
ing the serial network. These are available from a number of different suppliers, and most of them will easily attach right to
our serial network. Most of these allow you to ‘draw’ whatever buttons and user interface icons on their screens (using a
provided Windows program), attach ASCII strings to these ‘buttons’, and then download the final configuration to the opera-
tor panel so the PC can be taken away.
Typical modem programs you can use are Terminal.exe (which came with Windows 3.1) and HyperTerm.exe (which
comes later versions of Windows), or GilderTerm.
GilderTerm is available free from Gilderfluke & Co. for use with all our products. It can be downloaded from our web
page, and is included on all our CD-ROMs. GilderTerm has been optimized for use with all Gilderfluke & Company equip-
ment. All the commands are built in, and it will even let you use your mouse to select commands by simply clicking on them.
To use the Sd-50/xx with a terminal program, just configure it for 9600 baud, no parity, eight data bits, one stop bit and
‘xon/xoff’ handshaking. If you are using GilderTerm, all the settings are fixed at the appropriate settings. All you will need to
do is select the appropriate ‘COM’ port.
The Sd-50/xx is normally accessed through its RS-232 serial port. A configuration option available through the ‘Mp3
Config.exe’ program takes over the DMX-512/MIDI serial port to use it as a RS-422 receive-only serial port. This is called
‘
Net Serial ’ mode. Selection this option disables DMX-512 in , MIDI in , and IR Trigger in. Up to 256 different cards and de-
vices can be attached to the same serial lines, to form a RS-422 ‘multi Drop’ network. You can attach operator panels any-
where on this network to access and control it, or you can use a telephone or Internet modem so that it can be accessed
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485
Sd-50/xx Manual / October 29, 2012 2:29 PM / page 56 of 120