MAS7.1 Supplemental Guide, Rev 1.1, 9/28/07
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K.I.S.S.™
Keep It Simple Serial
The K.I.S.S.™ Command Structure Overview
The section of the manual describes the overall structure of the K.I.S.S.™ protocol. It only needs to be read if
you are having some problems with the way a product is behaving, or you just like reading this sort of thing.
The following conventions are used to describe the protocol:
<CR>
= An ASCII Carriage Return (‘0D’ hex)
<LF>
= Line Feed (‘0A’ hex)
<ESC>
= An Escape character (‘1B’ hex)
Device
= The Zektor device being controlled.
Controller
= A PC or other system, used to control the Zektor device.
Parameter
= A decimal value (0-9) that may, in some cases, be prefixed with ‘+’ or ‘-’.
A K.I.S.S.™ command in its simplest form is a command following by a <CR> for instance:
V<CR>
This will return the version number of a Zektor device.
A command can have a variable number of parameters with optional whitespace(s) following the command, for
instance:
P1<CR>
or
P 1<CR>
will turn power on. The spaces between the ‘P’ and ‘1’ are optional. Since commands consist of alpha charac-
ters only, there can never be a ‘P1’ command and ‘P1’ will always be interpreted as ‘P 1’.
When a command has more than one parameter, the parameters are separated by either whitespace(s) or a
comma, or both whitespace(s) and a comma, for instance:
LI 3 3 80<CR>
or
LI 3,3 , 80<CR>
will set the front panel LEDs to auto-dim, with a low intesity setting of 3, and a high intensity setting of 80. Once
again the space between the command and 1st parameter is optional. Space(s) may also appear before and
after the comma.
The comma is optional between parameters except when it is necessary to indicate a default parameter, for
instance:
LI ,,13<CR>
would set just high intensity level of the front panel LEDs without affecting the lower level, or the mode. The
commas are used to indicate the 1st and 2nd parameters are not supplied and the default values should be
used (in this case the default values are the current values, leaving the values unchanged). The space before
the 1st comma is optional.
Most commands can be queried for their current settings by substituting the ‘?’ for the parameter list, or by not
supplying any parameters at all. For instance to request the current LED Intensity settings:
LI ?<CR>
or
LI<CR>
This would cause the device to issue a LED Intensity Response, (the Response String format is described in
the paragraphs entitled: “The Response String”). The whitespace before the ‘?’ is optional.
