Testing HelloDevice IDE applet or application for HD13xx without real device : Mimicking real devices - 1
If you don't have a device that will receive commands or give some data to HD13xx like the climate controller in tutorial HD13xx, here is a way of simulating the real situation by a Hyper-terminal program that emulates COM port of your PC.
Instead of a real device, connect HD13xx' serial port to the COM port of your PC using a serial cable. Launch a COM port emulator program and connect to the COM port of your PC. Before starting the test, adjust the baud rate, parity, data bits, stopbit, and handshake mode of COM port emulator program to be same as those of the HelloDevice. The data sent from the applet (or application) that is running on your PC will be transmitted to the HelloDevice via TCP/IP network and the Emulator will receive the data so that you can confirm that the data is properly sent to the HelloDevice. Similarly, the data sent from the Emulator (this data can be sent from the Emulator by typing on the Emulator screen or by selecting the menu "send existing binary file", the binary file is made from a general Hex. editor) will be written to the serial port of the HelloDevice and will be submitted to the applet (or application) through TCP/IP connection.
Tip to mimic a real serial device properly :
When the device have to reply to a received command immediately, you have to
send the reply data prior to receiving the command so that the reply data is
buffered in the HelloDevice and will be sent to the applet (or application, the
source of the command) immediately after retrieving the command.
Also, a network protocol analyzer will be very helpful to check the incoming or outgoing network packets between HelloDevice(or other Ethernet-serial device) and applet(or application)
Note : When sending a file from an emulator, please don't forget to send in binary mode not ASCII mode.
Getting the necessary programs
To simulate a serial device like above, you need some helping programs. The
programs listed below are what we have used to test IDE applets or applications
without real devices and they work well. These programs are available for
download from the famous Internet download sites
Hyper terminal
Tera Term pro (32-bit) : Freeware
Hex. editor
UltraEdit 32 8.10 : Shareware 45 days trial
Network packet analyzer
LanExplorer v3.6 : 30 days demo