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Technical Documentation and
User Instructions
Laser Mirror Scanner LMS-Q280i
6.4 ECP Data Output
The ECP data output is a
8 BIT PARALLEL DATA OUTPUT
. It has been
designed to be directly connected to an
ECP compatible
LPT printer port of
an PC or compatible data acquisition unit
(this ports are also addressed
extended parallel ports
or
enhanced parallel ports
). ECP ports offer high data
transfer rates. Although designed for personal computers, interfacing to other
equipment is rather straight forward.
Specifications of the ECP mode can be found in IEEE standard 1284 -1994.
6.4.1 Reading Data via ECP
In order to read data from the ECP port we strongly recommend to install and
use RiPORT on the acquisition system. RiPORT is a driver to be installed on
the following platforms: WINDOWS NT, WINDOWS 2000, or WINDOWS XP.
Please follow the installation instruction provided with the RiPORT driver.
Reading data from the ECP port via RiPORT can be seen like reading data from
a file. Examples, written in C, show how to use functions
RiPortOpen
RiPortRead
RiPortClose
For operating systems Windows 98 and WINDOWS ME the ECP port has to be
accessed directly. Please consult the examples supplied with the driver (C++
source file
RiPort.CPP)
The “ECP data file” or, in other words, the binary data stream, starts with a
header record
, followed by
line records
containing the line data
(measurements). Every line record starts with a synchronization sequence,
followed by (a user definable number of ) data point data and ends with a trailer.
File structure
Line structure
Header
Sync
Line 1
DataPoint 1
Line 2
Data Point 2
.
.
.
.
Line N
DataPoint M
.