DMXter4 RDMtm
The New STANDARD DMX Tester
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ADDITIONAL RDM INFORMATION

The DMXter4's RDM support is still  growing.  The first RDM release was aimed mostly at managing RDM responders, since there are a limited number of consoles that are RDM controllers. The lastest release supports over 40 PIDs.
A new development-grade RDM packet viewer and sniffer is an option for V4.10 and newer software. It allows monitoring of transactions between an RDM aware console  and a group of responders.
 

Software V4.30  and a completely revised manual is now released.  The  release notes are online.

Discovery
  • Discover all responders on a system
  • Discover any new units connected since the last discovery.
  • Add UID manually Available only if ‘Advanced RDM’ is fitted
  • Remove UID manually Available only if ‘Advanced RDM’ is fitted.
Select Current Device
Select the current device using the Identify mode, or select it blind.


Display Device Information

This item displays device information including all required PIDs and some optional PIDs. If the responder does not support a request, you will be so informed. V4.00 software handles the following:
  • Device Model
  •    With the optional descriptive text
  • Device Label
  • Manufacturer Label
  • Software Version
    •     Numeric version
    •     Human readable version number.
  • Current DMX Address
  • Slot Footprint
  • Personality
  • Current Personality
  • Number of available personalities
  • Sub-device Count   
  • Sensor Count
  • Product Category
  • Category Number   
  • Category Descriptive Text
  • RDM Protocol Version
  • Device Hours
  • Power cycles
  • Lamp Hours
  • Lamp Strikes
Set DMX Address

Set DMX personality

Setup RDM Device
  • Device Label 
  • Display Level (Brightness)
  • Pan Invert
  • Tilt Invert
  • Pan / Tilt Swap
  • Lamp State
  • Lamp ON Mode
  • Power State
  • Capture Preset
  • Warm Reset
  • Cold Reset
  • Restore Factory Defaults
Sensors
  • Scroll through the available sensors
  • Display for each sensor, the type, the unit of measure, the multiplier and the current value.
  • Display: the allowed range, the maximum and minimum value detected, the normal values, and a recorded value.
  • Request that the responder resets the minimum and the maximum value of the current sensor.
  • Request that the responder records the current value of this sensor.
  • Request that the responder reset the min/ max values for all sensors in that responder.

Edit Null Start Code packet data. While querying responders, the DMXter4 continues to send Null Start Code data to responders (receivers). You may edit those values.

Choose DMXter4 RDM controller  user options

View Responder Timing
  • Response delay in μs
  • Break length in  μs
  • Responder MAB in  μs
  • Responder inter-slot time in μs
  • Total response packet length in  μs

ADVANCED RDM
The Advanced RDM software is an extra cost option, available to developers and verifiers.
A unit fitted with Advanced RDM supports five RDM flavors allowing compliance testing of responders.

The Advanced RDM software  saves the raw data from the last RDM request and response packets.  It also saves the raw data from the last RDM request and response packets that met the capture requirements (see below). It saves important data on the last 200 RDM packets. To access this data, the user browses the stored packet data. This may be done either on the LCD screen or dumped to the screen of your PC. There it may be analyzed or saved.

 Browse Packet History
 The results below are shown as they would look on a PC but the same data is displayed using 3 windows on the LCD display

  TIME TN  CC   NAME            RESULT             CC  PID   PDL   CC  PID   PDL
14.64 00h SET IDENTIFY DEV BROADCAST 30h 1000h 01h
* 14.72 01h SET IDENTIFY DEV GOOD RESPONSE 30h 1000h 01h 31h 1000h 00h
* 14.79 02h GET DEV MODEL DESCR GOOD RESPONSE 20h 0080h 00h 21h 0080h 14h
14.86 03h GET DEVICE HOURS RESPONSE TIMED OUT 20h 0400h 00h
 *           The packets marked with an ‘*’ are ones that met the capture requirements
Time      A time stamp in seconds since the RDM controller software was  started
TN          The Transaction Number

CC          Command Class name in human readable form
Name     The name for this PID
RESULT  Result code (error reasons will show up here)
CC           numeric CC of request
PID          request PID numeric code
PDL         length of request data payload
CC           numeric CC of response (if any)
PID           response PID numeric code (if any)
PDL         length of response  PID data payload
   
View Capture Request Packet
The last request packet that met the capture requirements may be viewed here.

View Capture Response Packet

The last response packet that met the capture requirements may be viewed here.

View Previous Request Packet
The most recent request packet can be viewed here.

View Previous Response Packet
The most recent response packet can be viewed here.

The capture menu is next. It allows you to set up to 8 slot-based capture criteria. These criteria may be for a request, or a response, or they may be split between the two.  Further criteria allow for capturing ‘all’ packets that met the above or only ‘good’, packets with ‘errors’,  or only misformed packets. A final restriction can be set to capture only packets of a set length.

Build Custom Request
This menu allows the construction of special packet types. Since DMXter4 is fully RDM aware, it can prompt you thru the construction of the packet telling what each entry means. It will calculate the checksum and do other housekeeping. However, it will let you edit the full packet. If you wish to send an absurd packet, it will let you.

This routine also allows for a standard or custom packet to be sent repeatedly

Scope Trigger Output
This menu allows the generation of a trigger pulse after a request, a response, or  a captured packet. It is most useful when used with a digital storage oscilloscope.

Send Information to USB
As well as the packet history mentioned above you can dump the Table of Devices (TOD) to your PC via the USB port.

BACK  DMXter4


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Brooklyn NY 11222 USA
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http://www.goddarddesign.com

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last updated Jan. 12, 2012

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