Russound MCA-66 on TCP driver

[lapointe.sc@gmail.com]

Has someone took the existing Russound MCA serial driver and converted to a TCP driver to communicate  directly in the MCA-66? 

If not how difficult would it be to take an existing TCP driver and merge to the Russound serial driver.

Thanks,

[Dean Roddey]

Are the protocols identical either way?

[lapointe.sc@gmail.com]

Are the protocols identical either way?

Dean,
Very similar. See attached. Close enough to change a few things to make it work I guess. Better than to start from scratch.

Tomorrow I will try a port redirector for CQC to talk to a serial port and redirect to the IP address of the MCA-66.

Thanks,

[Dean Roddey]

When the protocol is the same and only the medium (and the setup of that medium) changes, typically a single driver is used for both and it creates a socket or serial port as required, and there are just two manifest files that have setup for the different connection schemes (which causes that setup method to be called on the driver which tells it which type of connection to create.) The built in message reading methods in the driver base class can work in terms of either a serial port or a socket, or otherwise you just do an if socket do this, else do that.

If the protocol is different it would get somewhat messier and have more if this/that stuff.

[lapointe.sc@gmail.com]

When the protocol is the same and only the medium (and the setup of that medium) changes, typically a single driver is used for both and it creates a socket or serial port as required, and there are just two manifest files that have setup for the different connection schemes (which causes that setup method to be called on the driver which tells it which type of connection to create.) The built in message reading methods in the driver base class can work in terms of either a serial port or a socket, or otherwise you just do an if socket do this, else do that.

If the protocol is different it would get somewhat messier and have more if this/that stuff.

Dean,

I reached out to Russound today and they confirm the RNET protocol is implemented on the MCA series but only on the RS232 port. This means that my initial plan will not work. My backup plan is to try to add a RS232 to IP converter to the MCA-66. Then will create a virtual com port on the CQC Server and use the regular serial driver. In theory it should work.

I guess that this closes this thread of writing a new driver for the new Russound MCA series. But it would be nice to have a RIO driver for the new Russound devices on TCP/IP.

[gReatAutomation]

Check out Global Cache for RS232 control. The devices are rock solid.

Depending on your needs you could go with the iTach or GC-100. The nice thing about the iTach series is that they have a Wifi to Serial model for those installs where having a network cable is not possible.

https://www.globalcache.com/products/itach/models2/

https://www.globalcache.com/products/gc-100/models1/