Control Master Software

  
 
 

   Control Master Software is supplied free with any purchase of a board from the Control Master range. It consists of two parts. The first is a “ready to run” Windows application that allows the user to access all of the facilities on all of the connected boards. It provides manual control for all of the outputs whatever type they are (simple digital, relay, motor speed and direction etc..) and a display of the current state of the inputs (digital, analogue etc…).
    The second is a DLL function library to provide the programmer with an easy to use interface to all of Control Master facilities. The DLL provides functions which allow the programmer to ignore all of the complexities of USB communications and RS485 serial communications and just specify what they want a particular output to do on a specific board as well as read the current state of any input on any board.  All software is compatible with Windows XP and Vista.
 

    
 

   
                   
   

    Control Master is divided into separate pages which correspond to each type of slave board currently available within the Control master range. i.e. there is a separate page for the Digital I/O Slave, the Analogue I/O Slave, Motor Slave etc… As more slave board types are added to the range a new page will be added. In this way backward compatibility will be maintained with existing slave board types within Control Master.
    These pages are accessed simply by clicking on the “Tab” at the top of each page. However, the first page you see when you start the application is slightly different. It is a summary page which allows you to see which Slave boards are currently connected to your system and what Board Number they have been set to. Clicking on the “Scan” button will cause the program to search through all available board number slots (1 to 30) and establish communication with any board present. It takes a few seconds and you will see a list of the attached boards. The scan will also reveal what type of Master Controller you have connected to your USB port (i.e. Isolated or Non-Isolated). If no Master is detected then, obviously, no slaves will be detected and you should check you connection of the Master to the USB port and the installation of its drivers.
    Based on what board types you have connected to your system (revealed by the scan) you should then go to the page for that type of board. It should be noted that it does not matter how many of each type of board you have connected, you will still be able to access all boards connected to the system of a given type from the same page. In fact, you could have a system with 30 boards of the same type. In that case you would only use the one page for all of your boards.

    
   

   
       Next to every input and output control on every board page there is a box for a “Description”. This is intended to allow you to customise Control Master for your own particular application. They are simple text entry boxes which automatically retain the information you type into them even after a program restart. For example: You may be using a Digital I/O Slave to control two DC motors, a solenoid and three indicator lamps on the first 6 outputs. The description next to these could be…    
      Output Description      
      1
2
3
4
5
6		 Motor 1 (X axis)
Motor 2 (Y axis)
Pick up solenoid
Motion complete indicator lamp
Traversing error indicator
Travel limit indicator		      
                   
        This makes your control system much more accessible to understanding.  It is also possible to add descriptive text to the list of boards found on the scan page. Here you can enter descriptions meaningful to you about each board. For example you could add a description showing the location of each board. “Workshop 1”, “Garage”, “Greenhouse”, “Camera1 Tilt and Swivel” etc… etc… Again these descriptions, once entered, are automatically saved when you exit the program and automatically restored on restart. For full details of the Control Master software and all of the boards in the range you should refer to the Control Master Manual which can be downloaded as a pdf file using the link below.....    
                   
   

   To download a copy of the Control Master manual, right click on the link on the right and choose "save target as". This will allow you to download a PDF copy of the manual . 


Control Master Full Manual

    
                   
   

  You will need Adobe Reader installed on your PC to read this document. Adobe reader is available for free download from Adobe using the link to the right..

   
                   
                   
        A sample program showing how to control a Motor Slave may be downloaded using the link on the right. Right click on the link and choose "save target as". This example may be used as a template for all other "slaves" in the range simply by substituting the appropriate functions for the boards being used.
VBmaster.zip		    
                   
                   
                   
   

Compatible with Windows 2000,  XP, Vista and  Windows 7

    
              
                   
                   
 

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