User Manual

Serial Port Commands

The following commands are used to start, stop, and generally control the Br-ANA

through its primary serial port. The serial port commands can be used as the sole

method to control the Br-ANA, or as an adjunct to the Br-ANAʼs four optically isolated

trigger inputs.

The Br-ANAʼs serial port can be accessed from any computer running just about any

modem or terminal program. The computer you are using doesnʼt even need to have

any PC•MACs software installed on it.

One of the easiest and most ﬂexible types of operator interfaces for accessing the

serial port are the many touch screen operator panels. These can be a part of an exist-

ing PLC or room automation system (including AMX

, Crestron, etc.). Stand-alone touch

screen operator panels with serial port outputs are available from a number of different

suppliers (Maple Systems

and QSI Corp., etc.). These will easily attach directly to the

Br-ANAʼs (and other GilderGearʼs) four wire RS-422 serial network. Most of touch

screens are sold with a Windows program that will allow you to ʻdrawʼ buttons and user

interface icons on their screens, attach ASCII strings to these ʻbuttonsʼ, and then down-

load the ﬁnal conﬁguration to the operator panel. They need no PC or other hardware

once they are programmed.

Typical modem programs you can use with Gilderﬂuke & Co. equipment are

Terminal.exe (which came with Windows 3.1) and HyperTerm.exe (which comes with

later versions of Windows), or GilderTerm. The shareware Z-Term can be used on Mac-

intosh computers.

GilderTerm is available free from Gilderﬂuke & Co. for use with all of our products. It

can be downloaded from our web page, and is included on all of our CD-ROMs. Gil-

derTerm has been optimized for use with all Gilderﬂuke & Company equipment. All the

commands are built in, and it will even let you use your mouse to select commands.

To use the Br-ANA with a terminal program, just conﬁgure it for 9600 baud, no parity,

eight data bits, one stop bit and no handshaking. If you are using GilderTerm, all the set-

tings are preset. All you will need to do is select the appropriate ʻCOMʼ port.

In all the following commands, the command (shown in “quotes”) is the ASCII com-

mand. You can type these from your keyboard. The commands are all UPPER/lower

case sensitive.

The “(card address)” is the serial address of the single card that the will respond to

the command. In the Br-ANA, the serial address for a card is set using the two hexa-

decimal rotary switches on the Br-ANAʼs front. The ʻ(card address)ʼ for a Br-ANA repre-

sents a two digit ASCII hexadecimal number for the desired card. Valid characters are

Gilderﬂuke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485

Br-ANA Manual / December 18, 2012 10:21 AM / page 53 of 60