RS-232-C Control for Stepper Motor on Mac OS

[peregrin5]

Hi guys,

I'm an undergraduate student and I've been struggling with this Klinger Motor Controller. The relevant pages from the manual are page 35 on RS-232-C communication.

I'm new to Labview and just this stuff in general. I connected the motor controller to my Mac and MAX saw that there was something connected, however it didn't give me as many options as are shown in many of the tutorials. The only thing I was able to do was rename the connection and open up VisaIC. 

I tried sending commands through the I/O panel, but though it was saying commands were being sent, the motor controller wasn't doing anything and I couldn't read any data either (it times out).

I set the motor controller to 9600 baud rate, no parity checking, 1 stop bit, and an 8 bit serial word.

When trying to work with NI-VISAIC it didn't show anywhere where I could enter these parameters to make sure I had a good connection.

I also know really know whether it may be not working because of the syntax I am sending commands in. It should be able to read ASCII commands. It mentions that "all commands should be terminated by a carriage return", and "line feeds must be suppressed". I saw an option in VISA that mentioned something like that but when I tried it, no luck.

I've tried all combinations of commands including:

G

G\n

G\r

N 1000

N 1000\r

N 1000\n

N\s1000\r, etc.

They send but nothing happens. I have no idea what to do next. My advisor is getting impatient because I've been trying to interface with this motor controller for almost a month now, and it wasn't supposed to take this long...

[peregrin5]

I also forgot to mention, but when it sees it connected, it registers it as a USB. I have a series of adapters which is probably why. My laptop only has USB-C, so it has a USB-C to USB adapter. From there, it connects to a USB to Serial adapter which is then connected to the controller.

[peregrin5]

Figured it out. The manufacturer of the adapter I was using uses a different chip than FTDI. I had to download a specific driver from the manufacturer's website.