Example of a Simbox - Connected to an Easyport working with OSX - No ActiveX/Windows driver needed :)

Why?

Festo Didactic EasyPort is a GPIO device designed and manufactured by Festo Didactic, for connection to Festo Products using Syslink or Sub-D Connectors.

There is an ActiveX component for use in windows applications, but i wanted a node.js implementation for an ongoing project - So I have created a Cross Platform Library for using EasyPort in Node.js

import { EasyPort } from "@calumk/easyport-node-d2xx";
let easyport = new EasyPort({
    timeouts : {
        tx : 100,
        rx : 100
    }
}

How?

Thankfully the device is well documented, and the official manual details the serial port commands well.

The Library simply wraps these commands, in a friendly API.

Sending the following command via serial, would turn bit 4 on.

MA1.0.4=1\n

The library wraps this as

easyport.write_output_bit({
   bit : 4,
   value : true
})

Likewise, we can read, for example to read a whole word

DEW1.0\n

The library wraps this as

easyport.read_input_word()

There is also a monitoring mode avaliable to get interupt-style data from the device.

// Enable the Monitoring Mode
easyport.enableMonitoringMode()

// disable Monitoring Mode
easyport.disableMonitoringMode()

// this will tell you when the monitoring mode has changed
// This is useful, because if you try to write data while monitoring mode is on, it will be automatically disabled, and then re-endabled.
easyport.registerNewMonitoringModeEnabledListener((data) => {
    console.log("Monitoring Mode: ", data)
});

// This will log all monitored data (the value of the whole word 0)
easyport.registerNewMonitoringModeListener((data) => {
    console.log(data)
});

What Next?

This Library is still under development, and It will also form the basis for 2 other [upcoming unreleased] projects

@calumk/easyport-webusb

A re-implementation of the library using webusb to allow for driverless use in a web browser

@calumk/node-red-contrib-easyport-node-d2xx

A node-red implimentation of the library to allow for easy prototyping