Hello all,

recently obtained a Wallboard, which is an LED display board (something you might see displaying the stock ticker, etc...).

There are three RJ45 connections on the back along with a bunch of jumper settings to control them...

There is a RS232/RS422, RS422, and a tcpip...

I have no software for the board... I contacted the manufacturer who pointed me in the direction of the company that created the 'custom' software to run the board. Long story short...I have to program this badboy on my own.

I am good in c and vb but have never done any programming like this...

Tried vb with the mscomm control connected to the RS232 serial port, but couldnt get that to work. I have checked all of my settings on both the jumpers & code (baud, parity, etc...) and it all looks right to me. I even played around with different settings to no avail...

Wondering if anyone has any experience, or any suggestions to get this thing going. I can send you code I have if you want...

note...I have a windows and linux machine that I can use to try to get it to work (based on your experience I can try either)

...and I do know for sure that it works cause when you power it up it runs some tests (lights up) and displays the current settings.

Thanks in advance for any help...

 

You write a lot of text but give little information.

- what kind of OS is on your board (if any)?
- which programming languages are available for your board?
- is there a monitor software on your board (EPROM)? Eventually with RS232 functions.

For Linux/Unix, OpenVMS, RTOS, Windows you can take:
http://www.pvbrowser.org/pvbrowser/sf/manual/rllib/html/classrlSerial.html

Download:
http://pvbrowser.org
Download->Additional->rllib-10.tar.gz

 

You didn't say whether or not you have adequate documentation on the protocol for the wallboard. If you do, then good. If not, then forget it. If the problems is just writing a serial comm application in Windows, I can help you with that. Contact me through the forum moderators.

Robert Scott
Real-Time Specialties
Embedded Systems Consulting

 

Sorry...any sorry for the delay.
- what kind of OS is on your board (if any)?

No idea... It was originally used with a Nortel BCM phone system in a call center.

- which programming languages are available for your board?
No idea what will work with the wallboard

- is there a monitor software on your board (EPROM)? Eventually with RS232 functions.
There is a jumper to enable or disable an "EEProm prog". I have it set to enable.

 

I have no doco for the boards... but assumed that there would be some sort of standard for these wallboards.

I have coded a couple different serial comm apps but cant get anything to display on the board, nor do I have any indication that the information is being sent to the board. I dont get any error messages... nothing at all...

 

William,

It is likely that if the RS232 port is used to receive programming information, it also transmits some information at power up. Try to borrow a storage oscilloscope watch the pins when you power it up, it should will tell you a lot (baud rate, signaling levels,
prompt characters, etc.)

Work your way into it the simplest way possible. Instead of coding a VB app to communicate, use hyperterm (in windows) or something of that type, preferably with a
"transparent" mode to show all character values received.

Of course, the next best thing to the source code or decent documentation is to find one of these in actual use and put a serial port snooper inline.

Rufus

 

hi try using mscomm component in vb by clicking and dragging the radio button in the form click on the button and change its setting. you have to write few lines of code to control your lcd display

 

normally the sign vendor has an ASCII character set that you need to use to send unique messages. Canned messages can be downloaded to the sigh with software then the control part simply tells the sign whcih msg to display.

without the vendor s/ware tho not sure you could do this.

If you cant find the ascii stuff then you may be beat!!

Cheers from: Jeremy Pollard, CET The Caring Canuckian!
http://www.tsuonline.com