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User Manual
E727T0005, valid for E-727
BRO, 2019-06-28
Physik Instrumente (PI) GmbH & Co. KG, Auf der Roemerstrasse 1, 76228 Karlsruhe, Germany
Page 178 / 240
Phone +49 721 4846-0, Fax +49 721 4846-1019, Email
GCS Commands
The E-727 supports the PI General Command Set (GCS). GCS commands are accessible via the
TCP/IP, RS-232, and USB interfaces, and via data segment 2 of the SPI interface.
Notation
The following notation is used in this chapter to define the GCS syntax and to describe the
commands:
<...>
Angle brackets indicate an argument of a command, can be an
item identifier or a command-specific parameter
[…]
Square brackets indicate an optional entry
{…}
Curly brackets indicate a repetition of entries, i.e. that it is
possible to access more than one item (e.g. several axes) in one
command line.
LF
LineFeed (ASCII char #10), is the default termination character
(character at the end of a command line)
SP
Space (ASCII char #32), indicates a space character
"..."
Quotation marks indicate that the characters enclosed are
returned or to be entered.
GCS Syntax for Syntax Version 2.0
A GCS command consists of 3 characters, e.g. CMD. The corresponding query command has a
question mark added to the end, e. g. CMD?.
Command mnemonic:
CMD ::= character1 character2 character3 [?]
Exceptions:
Single-character commands, e. g. fast query commands, consist only of one ASCII
character. The ASCII character is written as combination of # and the character code
in decimal format, e. g. as
#24
.
*IDN?
(for GPIB compatibility).
The command mnemonic is not case-sensitive. The command mnemonic and all arguments (e. g.
axis identifiers, channel identifiers, parameters, etc.) must be separated from each other by a
space (
SP
). The command line ends with the termination character (
LF
).
CMD[{{
SP
}<Argument>}]
LF
CMD?[{{
SP
}<Argument>}]
LF