Introduction
1.6
Software Interfaces
The C-863 Mercury™ shares many features and commands with other Mercury™
class controllers from PI. It is possible to use either the Mercury™ native ASCII
command set or the PI General Command Set (GCS) to operate Mercury™ Class
controllers. The commands are used to set operating modes, transfer motion
parameters and to query system and motion values.
1.6.1
Native Command Set
The native ASCII command set is understood by the controller directly. It can be
used with virtually any terminal-emulator software and with
MMCRun
. Most native
Mercury™ commands begin with a two-letter mnemonic. The syntax of the native
commands and the detailed command descriptions can be found in the Mercury™
Class Native Commands software manual, MS176E.
1.6.2
GCS Command Set
GCS (General Command Set) is the PI standard command set, offering
compatibility between different controllers. With current Mercury™ firmware, GCS
command support is implemented by a Windows DLL which translates the GCS
commands to the native commands (for details, see the Mercury™ GCS DLL
manual, MS154E). The DLL has many command-oriented functions, making it
unnecessary to generate the GCS commands as ASCII strings. Most GCS
commands and the corresponding DLL function calls are characterized by a three-
letter mnemonic.
NOTES
Although the GCS DLL has a gateway for sending native commandsdirectly,
mixing native and GCS commands is not recommended. GCS move
commands, for example, may not work properly after the position is changed
by a native command.
GCS commands can be typed directly into the
Command entry
window of GCS-
compatible PI user-interface software, like
PIMikroMove™
(see the
PIMikroMove™
manual on the product CD).
1.6.3
Available Software
With the C-863 DC Motor Controller, all motion of the connected motors and
mechanical stages is programmed or controlled by software. To offer maximum
flexibility, software interfaces at a number of different levels are provided and
documented. Most of the individual programs and driver libraries are described in
www.pi.ws
C-863 MS173E Release 1.2.7
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