Help Topics

Help Topics for SBusServer

Supporting Multiple Connections
Supported SBus Commands
Data Table
Installation
Starting SBusServer
IP Port Configuration
Command Line Options

SBusServer

Overview:

SBusServer is a simple SAIA Ether SBus server with the following features:

It can support multiple incoming connections.
It supports the most commonly used Sbus server commands.
All data is stored in a common data table.
The IP port used is configurable.
The data table is configurable.

Supporting Multiple Connections:

SBusServer will accept multiple incoming client Ether SBus connections. There is no defined limit to the number of connections that it will accept. However, if more connections result in a greater volume of communications, the increased CPU load may cause reduced server performance.

Supported SBus Commands:

The following SBus commands are supported:

2 - Read Flags
3 - Read Inputs
5 - Read Outputs
6 - Read Registers
11 - Write flags
13 - Write outputs
14 - Write Registers

Data Table:

All SBus commands read and write to a data table. Flags, inputs, and outputs are mapped over each other and so address the same addresses. For example, writing to flag address 10 will also write to input 10 and output 10.

Address Ranges:

The data table has the following address ranges:

65536 - Flags, Inputs, Outputs.
65536 - Registers.

Installation:

Installing SBusServer:

SBusServer will come as an archive file in "tar-gz" (most platforms) or "zip" (MS-Windows) formats. The MS-Windows version has the special new-line character combination (CR-LF) required by that platform, but is otherwise identical to the standard version.

Extract the archive file into the desired location. SBusServer doesn't care where you place it.

Installing Python:

This is the language support for Python which is required for SBusServer to run. SBusServer has beent tested with versions 2.5 and 2.6. Other versions may work but have not been tested. For Linux, Python is often already installed. If not, it can normally be installed from the distro's package manager. For MS-Windows, Python can be downloaded from http://www.python.org

Starting SBusServer:

Starting SBusServer in Linux

SBusServer may be started from the command line. For Linux, the syntax is::


	./sbusserver.py

You should see something like the following appear::


	SBusServer version 08-May-2010
	Starting server on port 5050. Fri May 21 17:00:12 2010

Starting SBusServer in MS Windows

For Microsoft Windows, the syntax is::


	C:\Python26\python sbusserver.py

The path used for Python (e.g. "C:\Python26\") may need to be changed if you have installed a different version, or have installed it in a different location.

Stopping SBusServer

To shut down SBusServer, press "control-C" (press the "control" and "C" keys simultaneously). This will send a signal to SBusServer asking it to shut down. You should see something like the following appear::


       Operator terminated server at Fri Jan 01 18:56:31 2009

IP Port Configuration:

The Ether SBus protocol defines UDP/IP port 5050 as the "standard" port to use for Ether SBus communications. However, SBusServer allows you to select a different IP port by means of a command line parameter "-p".

Example::


	./sbusserver.py -p 8100

Command Line Options:

The available command line options are:

-p - port. E.g. -p 5050