Intellution FixDMACS: Input Serial Data using DDE

Using WinWedge and the FIX DDE UO driver, data from simple serial devices can be incorporated into a FIX database without writing an l/O driver specifically for the device. Outlined below are the basic steps to set up a serial communications link between WinWedge and a simple serial device (a bar code scanner) and to set up a DDE link between WinWedge and The FIX. These steps are fairly typical for most simple serial devices like electronic measuring instruments, scales, bar code readers and temperature sensors.

Steps for Setting up WinWedge

• Install WinWedge on your PC and start it. This will display a setup menu that allows you to configure WinWedge for the particular serial device that you will be using.
• From the Mode menu, select DDE Server. This will cause a dialog box to appear asking for a few DDE parameters for the application that you will be communicating with. These parameters are not used by The FIX and therefore may either be ignored or cleared out.
• From the Port menu, configure WinWedge appropriately for your serial device.
• From the Define menu, select lnput Record Structure and select the correct parameters necessary to describe how WinWedge should parse, filter and format your incoming serial data.
• From the File menu, select save to save your WinWedge configuration.
• From the Activate menu, put WinWedge in either Test or Normal mode. Test Mode allows the user to return to the main setup menu to edit WinWedge configuration. Normal mode is for runtime use only.

Steps for setting up FIX

1. If the DDE driver is not configured in the SCU, add it and start the FIX.
2. Add an 10-based block to the database. Set up the Hardware Specifications section as follows:

 Device: DDE I/O Address: =winwedge|comX!field(y)

“x” is the number of the COM port you're communicating with. “y” is the specific field in the l/O data to read. For example, the following l/O address can be used in a Text block to read text data from a bar code scanner connected to COM1. I/O Address: = winwedge|com1!field(1).

Because the data sent by the bar code scanner is simply text followed by a CR-LF, it is all contained in Field 1. In the Pre-Transfer Character Translations table (accessed from WinWedge Define Menu), the CR-LF was removed by translating it to NUL.