ICP DAS USA 8KE4, 8KE8, 8430, 8830 Appendix C VxComm technique, Use Virtual COM Port interface

Appendix C: VxComm technique

VxComm (“Virtual Communication Port”) is a technique that allows access to remote I/O slots or RS-232 ports. There are two types of software interfaces that can be used to access remote I/O modules and the COM ports of the 7188E/8000E series the first is serial port interface and the second is the TCP/IP interface. For the serial port interface, we provide a VxComm driver for Windows OS. It is used to create virtual COM ports to map to I/O modules and COM ports of the 7188E and 8000E. After creating virtual COM ports, you can easily upgrade serial devices to with Ethernet communication ability and the original software only need to link to a virtual COM port. It doesn’t need any source code modification.

Comparison of using Virtual COM Port and TCP Port to develop Ethernet application.

	Use Virtual COM Port interface			Use TCP Port interface
Programming	Program has to Send and			Program has to Send and
method	Receive command via COM Port			receive command via TCP Port
Extra Driver	Need to install VxComm driver on			No
	PC
Platform	Windows 98 /NT /2000 /XP			All platforms
SDK provided	DLL,	ActiveX, LabView	bundle	No ,program has to use DCON
	driver,	InduSoft bundle	driver,	Protocol	directly	to
	OPC driver			communicate with I/O modlues

8430/8830/8KE4/8KE8 User’s manual, Jan 2005, Version 1.0, 8MS-002-10 ----- 81