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company: AstroGeeks www.AstroGeeks.com

Virtual Serial Port ActiveX Control

• industry: astronomy software development
• location: Twin Lakes Ave, Greely, Ontario, Canada
• representative: Ray St.Denis, Owner

Victoria Veligodsky: What challenges made you search for software of this kind?

Ray St.Denis: We needed a way to virtualize a serial port to either emulate a physical serial device, or add functionality to an existing serial device.

Victoria Veligodsky: How did get to know about Virtual Serial Port ActiveX by Eltima?

Ray St.Denis: Your product is very popular: we searched the web, and found numerous listings for Eltima's Virtual Serial Port ActiveX. Finding your product was not that hard :)

Victoria Veligodsky: Did you try other products for the same task before choosing Eltima solution? Why did you prefer our product?

Ray St.Denis: We tried a few other vendor products but found that Eltima's solution to be more superior. Being able to download a working demo before purchasing was a must. Also, Eltima offers an OEM solution so that you can develop software without requiring your customers to then purchase run-time royalty licenses - that's a definite plus. The inclusion of a distributable self-installer was also a nice added touch which made distribution quite easy.

Victoria Veligodsky: Please, describe how you are using our product now.

Ray St.Denis: The following are some of the interesting projects that AstroGeeks have developed using Eltima's Virtual Serial Port ActiveX control:

NexRemote: A software replica of a physical hand control for a Celestron telescope. Since most physical hand controls have a serial port so that software applications can connect to, we had to provide a way of maintaining this functionality via software. Adding a virtual serial port using Eltima's VSP ActiveX controls was the solution. Telescope users no longer had to be physically close to their telescope in order to control it - everything could now be done at the comforts of their laptop, possibly even in another room.

COM2TCP: A pair of software applications: COM2TCP and TCP2COM, allows a user to connect any RS232 device to any software application located anywhere in the world. By converting the RS232 traffic to TCP traffic and then back from TCP to RS232, one is able to remotely control any RS232 device on a network or via the internet. Although the primary intention was to provide remote access to a telescope, we have had many customers using this solution in the manufacturing industry to remotely control their serial devices.

NexHub: In the astronomy field, there are many specialized software applications that are designed to connect to a telescope via RS232 and perform some unique function. Since there is only one RS232 port on a telescope, this means that users must close one application in order to start the other application since only one connection is allowed at a time. We developed NexHub using Eltima's VSP ActiveX controls so that it has 1 Master port (which would be connected to an existing RS232 port) and up to 8 Slave ports (virtual) can be defined in which software applications can connect into. By acting as a traffic cop for the serial device, many applications can now be connected at the same time to the same device. Also, to help reduce contentions on the serial line, NexHub employs a customizable cache table, with each entry having a Time-To-Live parameter. If several applications are requesting the current position of the telescope at the same time, then each request will look into the cache first instead of querying the device directly, thus reducing considerably the actual packets going to the device. Once the cache becomes old (ie 500ms), a fresh query will automatically refresh it.

BalanceSim: One of the common weight scales used in manufacturing industries is the Mettler-Toldeo scale. There are many companies developing software applications to communicate with the scale and collect data from it for later analysis. We developed a complete software emulation of the scale's protocol with a user interface to allow the user to change parameters and such. This allows developers and their sales staff to demonstrate their product during a presentation without the need of having a physical device on hand. It also allows software developers to test their software without cumbersome hardware cluttering their desks.

Victoria Veligodsky: How did you benefit from using Eltima solution?

Ray St.Denis: At AstroGeeks, we don't so much look at how we benefitted from using an Eltima solution, but how much our customer base have benefitted. They now have tools that did not exist in the industry and are able to utilize them in ways never thought possible. Thanks to Eltima, we all gained a great deal!