mcastSerial, ucastSerial

[korda]

Kevin, Mark,
Please explain mcastSerial and ucastSerial parameters.
What is purpose of ttl?
What does it mean - serial transparent mode?

How can client application/gateway send custom serial data in multi and uni mode to a node?
How the serial data passed from a client to an individual node, with a node outputting them on local UART0?
Please also explain terms Local Terminal and Local Gateway. What does this mean?

[mgenti]

Please explain mcastSerial and ucastSerial parameters.
What is purpose of ttl?

The purpose of the TTL is to control how many hops the multicast serial packet can take, just like in multicast RPC. For more info see this thread (http://forums.synapse-wireless.com/showthread.php?t=50).

What does it mean - serial transparent mode?

Essentially we are describing that you don't need to capture the serial data, send it via RPC, receive the RPC, and then output the data. You can set the device up to do that automatically, creating something like a wireless serial port.


How can client application/gateway send custom serial data in multi and uni mode to a node?
How the serial data passed from a client to an individual node, with a node outputting them on local UART0?

You would have to create a function in your SNAPpy script to print this data to your UART. Then call this function in your application passing it the data you would like the node to print.

Please also explain terms Local Terminal and Local Gateway. What does this mean?
"Local Terminal" is describing that if you have a UART cross connected to STDIO and you print something it will be outputted on the UART. "Local Gateway" is describing connecting a UART to a piece of Synapse software such as Portal or SNAP Gateway.

[korda]

I need to create a serial data pass from a client to a node or all nodes, both directions. Multi can uni mode.
How do I set up Uart in this case? Is it still transparent mode or something else? Sorry for asking again, but word transparent does not explain much to me, may be because it is not very technical term.

[kbanks]

I need to create a serial data pass from a client to a node or all nodes, both directions. Multi can uni mode.
How do I set up Uart in this case? Is it still transparent mode or something else? Sorry for asking again, but word transparent does not explain much to me, may be because it is not very technical term.

TRANSPARENT MODE (sometimes also called DATA MODE) is when the serial data passes between the UART and the RADIO, bypassing any SNAPpy script.

We showed examples of unicast (point-to-point) data mode in the example scripts here (http://forums.synapse-wireless.com/showthread.php?t=37)

We showed examples of doing multicast data mode in the example scripts here (http://forums.synapse-wireless.com/showthread.php?t=38)

The benefit of using DATA MODE AKA TRANSPARENT MODE is that we can get higher performance (no SNAPpy virtual machine interaction is required). The drawback is that the exchange is transparent - the SNAPpy script is unaware of the data being exchanged.

Also, in the current software TRANSPARENT MODE only moves data from one RF Engine's serial port to one or all other RF Engine's serial ports - neither Portal nor the Gateway can interact with the TRANSPARENT data stream.

Since you need a data stream that reaches your clients (on the other side of the Gateway), you need to use rpc calls, not TRANSPARENT MODE (more on this in my next post)

[kbanks]

So, TRANSPARENT MODE is not what you want.

Instead, you need to combine SNAPpy's STDIN/STDOUT support with RPC calls.

Danny Galyean emailed you some example scripts (written by me) back on 03/24/2008. Please take another look at example scripts yConnect.py and yPortal.py.

Now that you know a lot more about how SNAPpy works, I think they will make more sense to you.