Hokuyo URG Series Instrument Driver Readme

1. Overview

2. Required Software

3. Known Issues

• If you are upgrading your existing application from version 1.0 to version 2.x of the instrument driver, the upgraded Initialize VI will be broken if a value is not connected to the Protocol connector on the connector pane. The Protocol input is now required because the 2.x version of the instrument driver only supports SCIP 2.0. If your application requires the use of SCIP 1.1, please continue using Version 1.0 of the instrument driver.
• Although the support for the UHG-08LX, and UBG-04LX-F01 has been implemented in this driver, they have not been tested.
• Not all VIs or settings in a VI in this instrument driver are fully supported by all instruments models. This is documented throughout the instrument driver. Refer to instrument documentation for more details pertaining to your specific model.  Examples of some potential differences in models:
• UTM-30LX returns a command error when attempting to configure serial baud rate (device does not have a serial interface), but URG-04LX accepts command regardless of whether it is connected by USB or serial.
• Though documented in the SCIP 2.0 spec, no device tested works with configure laser sensitivity mode
• The UTM-30LX device accepts 2-byte encoding instructions when acquiring data, but returns the same data as if it were issued a 3-byte command resulting in bad data.
• Once an instrument is put into time configuration mode through the Match Time VI, the only commands accepted by the instrument will be Match Time commands until it is taken out of this mode or the instrument is power cycled.

4. Revision History

• Support for SCIP 1.1 has been deprecated, however all known Hokuyo Lidar drivers previously supported have the capability of working with driver version 2.0.  If your driver was using SCIP 1.1 protocol, refer to your instrument's manual to determine how to configure your instrument to use SCIP 2.0, and make modifications to any VIs which use the instrument driver's initialize VI.
• The following public VIs were added to the instrument driver:
• Configure Laser Sensitivity
• Sensor Specification
• Match Time
• Sensor State
• Error handling was greatly improved to return errors specific to each command, and general command errors
• The following VIs were changed:
• Initialize
• Reset? input added
• ID Query? input added
• Protocol input gives error for SCIP 1.1 mode, but has a new input "Convert to latest" which attempts to put a SCIP 1.1 instrument into SCIP 2.0 mode
• Protocol input is now required.  If unwired before, your VI will break after upgrading (the old default was SCIP 1.1 is not supported, so a VI change needed to be made).
• Configure Serial Baud Rate
• The VI now sets the VISA baud rate after setting the instrument's serial baud rate, existing code which set the VISA property node after calling this VI should continue to function
• The VI waits one second after issuing the command to the instrument to give the instrument command time to take effect
• Acquire Data
• A new Data Encoding Width input was added to specify whether you would like to perform a 2 or 3 byte encoded data read
• A major bug was fixed in the VI which corrects incorrect computation of the Direction output on instruments other than the URG-04LX which may have different front steps and angular resolutions than the URG-04LX
• Configure Laser Power - Ignore Errors input was added
• Close - was modifed to attempt to turn off the instrument's laser regardless of whether or not an error is input to the VI
• VI Tree, and palette menus - modified to include the new VIs

• The following VIs were renamed:
• Initialize renamed to Initialize-Standard. This VI still does all the initialization.
• The following VIs were created:
• Initialize-cRIO USB
• A simple wrapper which typecasts the VISA resource type to the type expected by Initialize-Standard.vi.
• Initialize
• Polymorphic VI composed of Initialize-Standard (ie, the old Initialize) and Initialize-cRIO USB.
• The following VIs were modified:
• Hokuyo URG Series Configure and Acquire Data
• Uses the new (polymorphic) Initialize.vi.
• Graph no longer uses a logarithmic scale.
• Initialize-Instr (ie, the old Initialize)
• Only tries to set serial-specific attributes if the underlying type of the VISA resource is Serial.
• No longer configures the VISA resource to automatically append the termination character to all messages.
• Added UHG-08LX to the list of officially supported models.
• Query Instrument
• Appends every command with a termination character (newline) since VISA cannot be configured to do so automatically regardless of whether the underlying resource type is Serial or USB Raw.