Smart Serial Cards

The mode behaviour is remote card specific so really does no belong in a general HostMot2 manual

the sserrial_port_n=NNNNNNNN (where N is a digit from 1 to 9) ion the config line specifies the modes for sserial devices 0 through 7
What a specific mode does is documented in the specific remote sserial card manual.

So for example on a 7I77 you could have sserrial_port_0=205XXXXX

Which would set the remote I/O (chan 0) mode to 2, the analog section (chan 1) mode to 0 and the device on the expansion connector (chan 2) mode to 5. The Xs would disable all the other sserial channels which is important if other sserial channels pins are used directly as GPIO pins, so the dont get driven when the sserial driver probes for remote cards.

That is: If you happened to want to use the RS-422 expansion connector for a spare (differential) input and output you would set sserrial_port_0=20XXXXXX so its sserial connections are disabled

I would do that for sserial mode information (reference Mesa manuals)

Note sserial cards are not just for 5I25 and are not related to the IEEE-1284 cable that the 5I25 uses

Here's a couple possible sserial setups:


5I20--> one 50 pin connector--> 7I52 --> 6 encoders plus 6 sserial remotes ( any 6 of7I64,7I66,7I69,7I70,7I71,7I73,7I83,7I84,8I20)

5I23 --> two 50 pin connectors --> 7I44 x2 --> 16 sserial remotes (any 16 of 7I64,7I66,7I69,7I70,7I71,7I73,7I83,7I84,8I20)

5I25 --> one 25 pin connector --> 7I76 --> one local sserial I/O (field I/O) and one expansion sserial I/O (for any one of 7I64,7I66,7I69,7I70,7I71,7I73,7I83,7I84,8I20)

5I25 --> one 25 pin connector --> 7i74 --> 8 sserial remotes ( any 8 of 7I64,7I66,7I69,7I70,7I71,7I73,7I83,7I84, 8I20)

etc etc

Yes, that would be good. Also the hostmot2 manual should mention that the firmware=XXXX text is not present in the config line for 5I25 cards

I'll try and get a updated hm2-stepper and hm2-servo config for the 5I25/ 7I76/7I77.
Since both have a large and known amount of I/O, I will at the minimum add limit switches for all axis
(both need different hal files than the standard hm2 demos because of the different I/O names)

also in the manual the mode examples you show only apply to the 7I77

the limits section is also 7I77 specific. Ill try and see what the actual parameter names are for numeric sserial I/O (maxlimit and minlimit are for outputs only, Ive got to check if inputs use the same fullscalemax name for their scaling parameter)