netX Serial DPM via USB/SPI

The netX serial DPM via USB/SPI (SPM = serial DPM via SPI) is a possibility to connect netX51/52/90/4000 hardware via an USB-FTDI chip to a PC system.
An application can use the CIFX-API to communicate to the hardware.

Hilscher offers various evaluation boards (e.g. COMXEB / NXHX-JTAG / NRPEB) including such a FTDI connection.

     

                                    

                                           

The package contains 2 components:

  • netX USB FTDI driver
    This package contains a hardware installation for the FTDI USB device under Windows
  • netXSPMUSB.dll
    The netXSPMUSB DLL is a DLL containing the CIFX API based user interface. It has the same layout like a cifX32DLL
    and can be exchanged with this DLL.

Two applications are available to test the netXSPMUSB functions:

  • netHost.exe:  Dialog based test application using the CIFX API
  • Testapp.exe:  Console based test application running various CIFX API functions

Connecting an own application, already using the CIFX-API:

It is possible to rename the netXSPUSB.dll into netXTransport.dll or cifX32DLL.dll.
All these DLLs are offering the same CIFX-API and therefore an application already using a specific DLL, can also use one of the other DLLs.
This allows an already existing application, using the CIFX API, to exchange the physical way to communicate to the hardware by exchanging/renaming the accessed DLL.