Hall Research HR-4P - Manual (Page 15)

Programmable Serial Controller
15
Troubleshooting
If you are having trouble configuring or communicating with the HR-4P unit, check:
UNIT SEEMS DEAD Comments
Check that the unit is powered with the supplied power
supply and operating normally.
With SWITCH in RUN Position the LED should
be on SOLID
With SWITCH in PRG Position the LED should
be BLINKING
GUI WON’T RUN
Verify that program installs without errors
Verify that the .NET Framework 2.0 minimum has
been installed
COMMUNICATIONS PROBLEMS WITH GUI
Set switch to PRG position when using the GUI The LED should be BLINKING
Ensure RS232 cable used is compatible with the PC
being used This is normally a NULL-MODEM cable with
pins 2 & 3 crossed.
Only Pins 2, 3 and 5 are used for serial
communication
Ensure PC COM port is set correctly on the
COMMUNICATIONS TAB
UNIT DOESN’T CONTROL SERIAL DEVICE
Verify unit and Serial Device have proper serial
interconnect cabling
Straight Cable or Null-Modem
Verify via PC and Hyperterminal that unit outputs
proper characters at proper baud rate when the
appropriate event occurs.
Verify serial device can be controlled via
HyperTerminal or similar program
Set switch to RUN position when unit is put into service The LED should be on solid
PRG vs RUN mode Demystified
In
Run
mode the unit does not pay attention to any RS-232 data coming from external device. Hence, the RS-232 port is used only to
send out data (as defined in Action Strings). This is done because the unit has its own command set that it understands (described in
last section), and if it were paying attention to the incoming data, upon getting wrong commands it will output “Err”.
So if, for example, if you have connected the serial port to a projector and your defined Actions are sending commands to the projector,
the returned data from the projector need to be ignored, lest they be interpreted as commands!
In
PRG
mode the unit pays attention to incoming RS-232 data. However, if Actions are trigged by input state changes, all aspects of
the Actions are executed except serial output part. This is done because if you were connected to the PC and running the GUI, and if
inadvertently you trigger an Action String with serial output, that data it would crash the GUI!
In PRG mode the unit does, however, execute other portions of your defined Action such as blasting IR outputs, or changing I/O output
state (high, low, or pulse).