Problem
I am working on modifications to one of my applications that communicates with a telescope.
One of the most annoying problems due to nothing else but reckless poor design, is the GOTO controller and its keypad.
If anyone of you remember the Sinclair Spectrum you know what I mean. As well as the rubber keys, the crucial keys for guiding and slewing the telescope are awkward to locate when your eye is trying to adapt to the view.
All it takes is the wrong key and you spend another 30 minutes or so re-aligning the telescope.
Workaround
My solution is a game controller such as a wingman, it fits neatly into your hands and is easy to locate the buttons. Also there is no risk of reseting the mount.
Question
My question is this, how does Delphi interact with game controllers because tthere is no mention in the documentation? Otherwise how do I access a gameport when it is connected through a USB dongle?
Working with the game controller is part of the Windows API. JEDI's JVCL has a Human Interface Device (HID) constroller (TJvHIDDeviceController) component that does what you want.
Delphi applications running on "NT" line operating systems (NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 2003, 2008...) can't access hardware devices directly. Only drivers can, because the I/O ports required to access them can be accessed only by code running at the right IOPL level (which is 0 in Windows). There are some generic drivers available that open any I/O port (thus creating a security hole) that user code can call.
But tt's far better to rely on device drivers, and use the HID API to interact with them. Windows will recognize most older devices (like the serial/game port Wingman), while newer USB ones or use the standard drivers that come with Windows, or come with their own. Once the system recognizes the devices, you can use them in a standard way with no need to dig in the low-level details.
Related
Is it possible to access my Cisco router details like Name,Model,IP Address,Connection status etc from my iOS mobile.
I'm even ready to write small mobile app in iOS to get all router details.
Since I have just started learning in iOS, don't know if any library already exists for above task.
If my router does not work or gets hang.. I even want to try for restart of router using my mobile.
If example code exist, it will be very useful.
Like Cisco already has andriod and iOS app for same above function but dont want to use this app and want to write my own app with limited features only.
(http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/cisco-connect-express-manage-router-settings-remotely-android-ios/)
Thanks,
Accessing network gear is best done by using SNMP. Cisco has extremely rich management/monitoring capabilities via SNMP and all of their MIBs are publicly available here.
Almost all Cisco gear supports the SNMPv2-SMI MIB (the 1.3.6.1.2.1 OID) so querying things like sysName, sysLocation, sysContact, sysDescription, sysUpTime should be very easy. This MIB even supports tables for listing all the interfaces and IP addresses and has a whole lot of other things that might be of interest to you.
If you have SNMP write access on the device then you can even make config changes and perform management functions like rebooting or bringing an interface up/down.
There are a few SNMP libraries for ObjectiveC and I think Net-SNMP is the most popular (It's not .net even though the title suggests that).
If you are new to SNMP then I suggest starting simple by querying easy objects like 1.3.6.1.2.1.1.5 (sysName) and 1.3.6.1.2.1.1.6 (sysLocation) before trying to jump into tables like 1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2 (ifTable)
Remember, you don't have to stick with the standard MIBs you can download all of the custom ones that are particular to your device which will give you incredible amounts of flexibility.
You could use a screen-scraping technique to telnet or ssh to the Cisco device and parse the "show version" output. This will give you some of the information you need. For others, like IP addresses, you can use "show ip interface brief", "show cdp neighbors" etc. as you need.
Keep security in mind: make sure that telnet/ssh credentials are adequately protected in your app's settings, and try to restrict your commands to those that do not need privileged access on the Cisco device.
Be aware that Cisco devices have a small pool of available VTYs, and every telnet/ssh access from your app will use up one VTY. So if you have for example 30 guys wanting to use the access the device simultaneously from their apps, some of those instances are not going to get access to the device.
If this is a concern, SNMP is a better and more scalable option as suggested by previous answer. Make sure that you (a) have a read-only community string configured on the device, and (b) use only the ro community string from the app.
I am trying to connect ICP CON i-7565 (USB<->CAN interface) to a custom made device (supporting CAN2.0B, proved to work with PCL-841 card) Although I think I have configured BAUD and acceptance code/mask correctly I can see CAN no messages coming from the device (ICP provides a tool that should allow me to send and receive CAN messages).
I am new to CAN bus so I appreciate any help regarding how to identify the problem.
I-7565 might be wrong interface for me, I might have misconfigured it, or it is simply broken. Or I am just doing something wrong out of my ignorance. I don't think anyone can help me with my specific problem, so I am rather asking for general information on how are problems with CAN bus identified and analyzed. In TCP/IP for example, you would call ping, you'd recheck your ip and gateway settings etc. What do you do for CAN communication?
Additional info:
OS: Win7 64bit
connector: DB-9 with standard wiring (2,3,7)
Finally I tried to work with different USB<->CAN interface from different manufacturer and it worked like a charm. My old interface was either broken or incompatible for reasons unknown. While working on this problem I learned couple of things about CAN bus and so now I share what I think was the right answer to my original question: How to troubleshoot CAN bus communication?
read manual to your USB-CAN interface
install driver of your interface device and make sure it is working (check device manager, depending on the type of your device you will see new COM port added or new USB controller )
your device should be shipped with it's own test/analysis software (they might call it utility or similar), run it and check if it can connect to your device
CAN communication uses three wires that are referred to as High, Low and Ground and is usually connected with DB-9 connectors where High is linked to pin n. 7, Low to pin n. 2 and Ground to pin n. 3 or 5 - make sure this is connected correctly on both your USB interface and CAN device you want to communicate with
set properties of your connection, these are most of all: CAN type (2.0A or 2.0B) BAUD rate, Acceptance Code and Acceptance Mask
if you've done all of this and still you can see no CAN messages arriving in your utility program, check with a different USB-CAN interface or find some other way to test if your device is actually emitting CAN messages and your USB interface is in fact able to receive them. (this was actually my case)
i have a device (cash drawer) and i would like to directly communicate with the device. I know that its on address f1. Also openbit is 01.
As i've understood so far, i'd need to send 1 to memory address f1 and the cash drawer should open. Though using asm, i get access violation. Then again i've read that windows does not let you communicate directly to device i/o addresses (need to use win). What would be the correct way to send the data to that address.
Note that i cannot use drivers, because i can't communicate with the driver inside my application.
Op. system is win7.
Thanks in advance!
There was a library called inpout32.dll that allowed direct port access you can find it here
http://logix4u.net/Inpout32.dll_Discussion/write_DELPHI_for_inpout32.dll.html
But i don't know if supports windows 7.
In addition to the excellent suggestions above, check out this delphi code for writing and reading I/O. We have used the GWIOPM to do what you are asking, but note that it will be ok for 32-bit versions of Windows up to W7 etc (as is the case for most 'free' drivers). For 64-bit Windows you need a signed kernel driver. For this there are few things available at the moment. We had to write our own.
Why can't you communicate with the driver from your application? It's the best way for ring 3 application to talk with hardware in a safe manner.
However, if you really insist using drivers, you can try going to ring 0 and do direct access. It's much harder than in previous Windows versions (XP and before) but it's possible. I haven't done it myself since I don't have Windows 7, but you can try asking in asm programming forum anywhere.
The situation is simple. I've created a complex Delphi application which uses several different techniques. The main application is a WIN32 module but a few parts are developed as .NET assemblies. It also communicates with a web service or retrieves data from a specific website. It keeps most of it's user-data inside an MS Access database with some additional settings inside the Registry. In-memory, all data is converted inside an XML document, which is occasionally saved to disk as backup in case the system crashes. (Thus allowing the user to recover his data.) There's also some data in XML files for read-only purposes. The application also executes other applications and wants for those to finish. All in al, it's a pretty complex application.
We don't support Citrix with this application, although a few users do use this application on a Citrix server. (Basically, it allows those users to be more mobile.) But even though we keep telling them that we don't support Citrix, those customers are trying to push us to help them with some occasional problems that they tend to have.
The main problem seems to be an occasional random exception that seems to pop up on Citrix systems. Never at the same location and often it looks related to some memory problems. We've p[lenty of error reports already and there are just too many different errors. So I know solving all those will be complex.
So I would like to go a bit more generic and just want to know about the possible issues a Delphi (2007) can have when it's run on a Citrix system. Especially when this application is not designed to be Citrix-aware in any way. We don't want to support Citrix officially but it would be nice if we can help those customers. Not that they're going to pay us more, but still...
So does anyone know some common issues a Delphi application can have on a Citrix system?
Does anyone know about common issues with Citrix in general?
Is there some Silver Bullet or Golden Hammer solution somewhere for Citrix problems?
Btw. My knowledge about Citrix is limited to this Wikipedia entry and this website... And a bit I've Googled...
There were some issues in the past with Published Delphi Applications on Citrix having no icon in the taskbar. I think this was resolved by the MainFormOnTaskbar (available in D2007 and higher). Apart from that there's not much difference between Terminal Server and Citrix (from the Application's perspective), the most important things you need to account for are:
Users are NEVER administrator on a Terminal or Citrix Server, so they no rights in the Local Machine part of the registry, the C drive, Program Folder and so on.
It must be possible for multiple users on the same system to start your application concurrently.
Certain folders such as the Windows folder are redirected to prevent possible application issues, this is also means that API's like GetWindowsFolder do not return the real windows folder but the redirected one. Note that this behaviour can be disabled by setting a particular flag in the PE header (see delphi-and-terminal-server-aware).
Sometimes multiple servers are used in a farm which means your application can run on any of these servers, the user is redirected to the least busy server at login (load balancing). Thefore do not use any local database to store things.
If you use an external database or middleware or application server note that multiple users will connect with the same computername and ip address (certain Citrix versions can use Virtual IP addresses to address this).
Many of our customers use our Delphi applications on Citrix. Generally speaking, it works fine. We had printing problems with older versions of Delphi, but this was fixed in a more recent version of Delphi (certainly more recent than Delphi 2007). However, because you are now running under terminal services, there are certain things which will not work, with or without Citrix. For example, you cannot make a local connection to older versions of InterBase, which use a named pipe without the GLOBAL modifier. Using DoubleBuffered would also be a really bad idea. And so on. My suggestion is to look for advice concerning Win32 apps and Terminal Services, rather than looking for advice on Delphi and Citrix in particular. The one issue which is particular to Citrix that I'm aware of is that you can't count on having a C drive available. Hopefully you haven't hard-coded any drive letters into your code, but if you have you can get in trouble.
Generally speaking, your application needs to be compatible with MS Terminal Services in order to work with XenApp. My understanding is that .NET applications are Terminal Services-compatible, and so by extension should also work in a Citrix environment. Obviously, as you're suffering some problems, it's not quite that simple, however.
There's a testing and verification kit available from http://community.citrix.com/citrixready that you may find helpful. I would imagine the Test Kit and Virtual Lab tools will be of most use to you. The kit is free to use, but requires sign-up.
Security can be an issue. If sensitive folders are not "sandboxed" (See Remko's discussion about redirection), the user can break out of your app and run things that they shouldn't. You should probe your app to see what happens when they "shell out" of your app. Common attack points are CHM Help, any content that uses IE to display HTML, and File Open/Save dialogs.
ex: If you show .chm help, the user can right-click within a help topic, View Source. That typically opens Notepad. From there, they can navigate the directory structure. If they are not properly contained, they may be able to do some mischief.
ex: If they normally don't have a way to run Internet Explorer, and your app has a clickable URL in the about box or a "visit our web site" in the Help menu, voila! they have access to the web browser. If unrestrained, they can open a command shell by navigating to the windows directory.
Has anyone successfully talked profibus from a .NET application?
If you did, what device/card did you use to accomplish this, what was the application, and did you use any kind of preexisting or available code?
We've not used Profibus, but have used DeviceNET (another CAN based protocol), Ethernet/IP and ControlNet which all have similar challenges.
We've been doing this since the late 1990's and therefore rely mainly on our own generated code using off-the-shelf hardware. The companies that have shown longevity during that period that I remember are:-
AnyBus (HMS, www.anybus.com) we've recently started using their gateway products as we can place fieldbus interfaces close to the hardware and then communicate over normal Ethernet (usually using Ethernet/IP www.odva.org). This has the advantage of separating hardware and PC using only a network cable. The Ethernet/IP .NET classes were written by ourselves as nothing much was on the market at the time. I'm sure a quick google search would find suitable class libraries
SST (www.mysst.com) have had fieldbus interfaces for more than a decade. The last SST card we used for DeviceNET still only had VB6 sample code. A good selection of fieldbus support and different form-factors e.g. PC104, PCI, PMCIA
Beckhoff/Wago (www.beckhoff.com, www.wago.com) we typically use Beckhoff for the I/O more than the interface cards but again a company that has been around a long time. They also have products that support exposing using OPC (another way for you to get I/O information without directly communicating with the hardware/devicedrivers)
I suggest not using OPC interfaces to the hardware directly (it’s OK for communication using PC (.NET)->PLC->Profibus) as you need to ensure that the control system responds to loss of control from your .NET application. I’m assuming that you are needing a profibus Master here (not a slave), so as long as your control system is intrinsically fail safe, then loss of communication should mean the control system enters an "Idle" state and therefore most of the I/O will return to the fails safe state.
We also try to ensure that we do not put safety related code in .NET. Most of our .NET code is userinterface from a PLC, but in some places we do control the fieldbus directly but ensure hardware interlocks will prevent un-safe operation, either using safety switches/relays or a small PLC with the the task of interlocking only. And above all make the system fail-safe! Loss of comms from the .NET code should shutdown the automation to the fail-safe state.
We have used Steeplechase to connect to our profibus to our automated pick system.
http://www.phoenixcontact.com/automation/32131_31909.htm
Try this: http://libnodave.sourceforge.net