The BH8-280 hand implements each of the important commands found in the earlier BH8-Series
hands to offer compatibility. These commands are found in the new hand:
•
Movement commands: C, HI, HOME, IO, IC, LOOP, M, O, T, TC, TO
•
Motor property commands: FSET, FGET, FLOAD, FSAVE, FDEF
•
Global property commands: PSET*, PGET*
•
Administrative commands: RESET
Note that PSET and PGET are commands for setting and getting global property values. The 280
hand will set all properties to the given value for PSET commands and will return -9 for a PGET
command. The API does contain some virtual properties like the global “LFT” loop feedback
temperature property. Virtual properties are read and written to variables on the host PC. The
following commands have been left out for the 280 hand and probably won't be available because
there is no interactive mode via command prompt or global properties.
•
Motor property commands: FLIST, FLISTV
•
Global property commands: PLOAD*, PSAVE*, PDEF, PLIST, PLISTV
•
Global property commands:
•
Administrative commands: ?, ERR, VERS
•
Advanced commands: a?, FLISTA, FLISTAV, PLISTA, PLISTAV
The hand API provides a special “Command” method for processing a subset of the Grasper
Control Language (GCL) character strings containing commands and returns a response to
commands in a user supplied receive buffer. The string is parsed into commands that may contain
a motor string prefix and possibly some parameters. This allows significant backwards
compatibility and allows sending commands in the form of strings and receiving responses from
the hand in the form of a string. A list of the presently accepted strings include “RESET” and:
•
“HI”
•
“C”, “O”
•
“M <optional position parameter>”
•
“HOME”
•
“IC <optional step size parameter>”, “IO <optional step size parameter>”
•
“TC”, “TO”
•
“FSET <property> <value>”
•
“FGET <property>”
•
“FLOAD, FSAVE, FDEF”
•
“T”
•
“LOOP”
The list of properties available on 280 hands is a subset of Puck 2 hand properties and virtual
properties such as the ones that contain RealTime variables. Refer to Section 6 for more
information on RealTime properties. The API contains documentation for 262 and 280 hands in
separate source code files for each hand. The documentation is easily accessible through the
supervisory tab of the BarrettHand Control GUI. The programmer no longer needs to flip through
this manual to find hand properties and their purpose, descriptions, notes, etc. The property list
that each hand contains provides several useful attributes such as being read-only, global, and also
a range of values that is used to validate inputs to some commands.
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