netX Transport Windows

Owned by Anonymous
Last updated: 2016-07-06 by Anonymous
2 min read

Implementation of the "netX Diagnostic and Remote Access" service for Microsoft Windows based operating systems.

The idea behind the netXTransport DLL is to offer the CIFX API Hilscher standard interface to communicate to netX based Hilscher devices via
different serial connections like USB/Serial or TCP.

This allows to write one application using the CIFX API and by exchanging/renaming the accessed DLL also exchanging the way to communicate to the hardware.

CIFX32DLL.dll (comes with the cifX device driver for WIndows):

  • Offers the CIFX API as the application interface
  • Standard cifX device driver DLL to access the Hilscher cifX Windows driver

netXTransport.dll:

  • Offers the CIFX API as the application interface
  • Access to Hilscher devices via USB / Serial or TCP by using different connector DLLs

The implementation consist of a netXTransport DLL (32/64Bit), a RS232 connector (RS232Connector.dll) and a TCP connector (TCPConnector.dll).
Connector DLLs are dynamically loaded by the netXTransport DLL which expects a "plugins" directory containing the connector DLLs.

Available Connector DLLs

  • RS232/USB Connector
  • TCP/IP Connector

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 netXTransport.dll into cifX32DLL.dll or netXSPMUSB.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.