Hi all and WaveyDipole
To make a long story short, I have one Prologix Ethernet adapter and many GPIB instrument, normally they should be able to all be connected, even if off, but unfortunately not all instruments
stick to the standard, leaving me to either reconnect or have several unnecessary devices on.
To make life easy, I have decided to use one gpib adapter on each instrument, as a simple way of solving this issue. However, the prologix adapter is about 500 euro, leaving an investment of 5000 euro to get all my gear on a single adapter!
Luckily WaveyDipole and others has done a really great work on the AR488!
But what is missing for my case is ethernet support, I really don’t want 10+ usb serial devices to keep track of, needing to relay them over a server.
Therefore I have started to implement a fork of the project that supports ethernet as well as usb-serial as before. I have committed a fully working proof of concept, but a lot of work remains to fully integrate it, it is not the most robust interface right now, but when replacing the original prologix adapter with the prototype, all my scripts works as if nothing has happened. I have NOT tested every function! It still maintains it support for using serial instead of ethernet, but I have not tested everything here either. It should be considered a working prototype at this stage.
There is also added support for external microchip eeprom that has a unique mac address, tested, but not implemented the actual part of assigning the mac based on the eeprom, everything is hard coded right now.
Reason for this post is that I wanted to say thanks and to check if there is any interest, or maybe ongoing implementation of ethernet for the original repro? In an ideal world I think it would be cool if we could keep it to one code base, instead of me going of in my own direction.
The project has grown quite large and it is a bit due for a restructure to improve readability.
I will gladly help, but I also fully respect if neither ethernet, my way of doing it or other changes are wanted.
I have started on PCB for the ethernet version, supporting either power over ethernet or usb-c.
The usb-c will be a fully functional serial interface and I think default debug on the serial port with the possibility to switch the usb interface as the main interface can be handy.
Right now the form factor is about the same as the prologix, but will see how it turns out.
I am using the atmega4809 as it has enough flash to support ethernet and dhcp and is very cheap, I try to focus a bit on the cost, since I will need at least 10 units. If I can get 10 DIY interfaces for the price of one prologix and some hours spent, I will be very happy.
I did a quick speed comparison, with no attempt to optimize the code, and right now my fork is about 10 times slower than the prologix adapter. I can transfer about 3.2kB/s right now, and to be honest, I think that is fast enough for my needs. But still something I will look into, I haven't even
used the fastest port mapping(using the default custom config option).
Used a curiosity nano with an Arduino ethernet shield 2 to prototype it, but it should work fine with a mega or uno wifi rev2 etc as long as it has big enough flash.
My fork is up here:
https://github.com/Kofen/AR488Realize this post isn’t so short after all, sorry for the wall of text!
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
