Moxa Ethernet to Serial with Visa Showing Strange Characters

Before I go to Moxa with these questions, I was hoping to see if someone could easily say "I've seen that before and this is probably what's wrong." I am using a Moxa device that is just ethernet to serial (NPort 5150). As far as I can tell I have everything matching correctly in terms of serial configuration, and I am just doing a loopback test. However the data has some weird characters at the beginning when I read it back. These seem to shift as I add extra text at the beginning of my string and maybe has something to do with the first space in the string? Has anyone seen anything like this before with either Moxa or other ethernet to serial devices? The device does have some delimitter options but right now they aren't selected so I don't think that's the issue.
They have a DLL with functions available that I'd like to try in case they are doing something special under the hood, but I'm really trying to avoid writing a wrapper around a bunch of CLFNs if native G will do. My next step may be to compile one of their example C programs and write some data to see if I get the same results as my LabVIEW app.
CLA, LabVIEW Versions 2010-2013
Solved!
Go to Solution.
Attachments:
test_moxa.png ‏106 KB

Marco, your question about the serial interface got me thinking, beause yes it is 232 but has 485 capabilities...
Maybe I just needed to sleep on it, but I came in this morning and was looking at the settings. The device defaults to serial type being 485. I switched it to 232 and it worked (big surprise...).
Thanks for encouraging my brain to start working again.
CLA, LabVIEW Versions 2010-2013

Similar Messages

Excel shows strange characters over Remote desktop

Hi,
Experiencing this weird issue were when I RDP to my computer , the characters in excel sheet display weird characters
For instance the letter A looks squished
When opening the same excel sheet locally, the normal text is displayed.
Repaired office, looked for updates and nothing seems to fix it.
All your help will be greatly appreciated.

First of all.   I did not say we only had the problem with Server 2008 R2.   We DO NOT have any problem at all with Server 2008 R2.   The only problem is when using RDP to run an application on either Server 2003 or Server 2008.
That means the original version, the 32-bit version of Server 2008.
We have just tried various clients. The clients tried include XP, Win 7 and Win 8.1.   On Win 8.1 the RDP version is 6.3.9600.   On XP the RDP version is 6.0.6001.   I am not sure which RDP was being used on Win 7.
All of these clients had the same problem that I am posting about.   Strange characters.   They almost look like an incorrect character set.
The very same application that is giving us problems via RDP was tried by running directly via the LAN and WAN. When this app is run in this manner everything looks fine and there are no strange character issues. Just in case anyone wants to
suggest that we run this app in that manner, forget it!   The reason we run using terminal services is because the performance is way too slow of the WAN link if we try to run direct. I also want to point out that this app has been running,
using terminal services for several years now and there has not been an issue.
As for screen shots, I'm working on that.

[SOLVED] Font problem. Zsh prompt shows strange characters.

I am seeing strange characters in Zsh prompt only, bash works fine. I probably did not follow the font configuration section of Arch Beginner's Guide properly during installation. Earlier I had problems with login consoles too (tty2, tty3, all those black screens you can go to using CTRL+ALT+F2/F3 etc.) But I fixed those problems by creating /etc/vconsole.conf.
Zsh problem still remains. I am using oh-my-zsh.
I am out of ideas as to what to do. Please help.
Last edited by Hindol (2013-04-23 08:37:47)

What happens if you remove all the oh-my-zsh stuff?
From your screenshot it looks like you are in X: you might want to change your thread title as it is a little misleading.
Check your locale while you are at it.

Report showing strange characters

Hello,
If i am entering inverted single or double quotes through the User interface, they are visible in the application but when i view this in Oracle report, it is not able to recognize these characters and showing them as inverted question mark signs.
For example if i enter "information" (note that the quotes are inverted if i copy from microsoft word), it is coming as ¿information¿ in the report. Please help in handling this
Thanks in Advance

Do you really need in your report those "smart" quotes the Work supplies? Can you go with just regular straight quotes? If so, you can get rid of the smart quotes before copying to the report. Here is what MS Word help says about it:
Change curly quotes to straight quotes and vice versa
Microsoft Word automatically changes straight quotation marks ( ' or " ) to curly (smart or typographer's) quotes ("or") as you type.
To turn this feature on or off:
1. On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options, and then click the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
2. Under Replace as you type, select or clear the "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box.
Note You can find and replace all instances of single or double curly quotes with straight quotes in your document. To do this, clear the "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box on the AutoFormat As You Type tab. On the Edit menu, click Replace. In both the Find what and Replace with boxes, type ' or ", and then click Find Next or Replace All.
To replace all straight quotes with curly quotes, select the "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box, and repeat the find and replace procedure.

Data export from unicode SAP to AIX file shows strange characters in vi

Hello SAP experts,
We have a SAP ECC 6.0 system, Unicode. When we export data from the SAP system to a textfile on AIX and we do a vi on the file the character ë is printed as: Ã«
We installed the bos.loc.utf.NL_NL package on AIX to no avail.
Any insights you can offer will be much appriciated.
Regards
Dirk Visser

Thanks for your explanation. It helped me understand better the way ODI works.
Does the pattern has a period '.' in front of it too? I am trying to run a job to load data from flat file to a RDBMS table and one of the steps in which I am getting error is
Code:
create table .C$_0TRG_SALES_PERSON
     C1_SALES_PERSON_ID     NUMBER(8) NULL,
     C2_FIRST_NAME     VARCHAR2(80) NULL,
     C3_LAST_NAME     VARCHAR2(80) NULL,
     C4_DATE_HIRED     VARCHAR2(80) NULL
Error message:
903 : 42000 : java.sql.SQLException: ORA-00903: invalid table name
I tried running the above piece of code directly on TOAD and I got the same error message - Invalid table name ?
Any idea why the period is getting pre-fixed ? Anyway to remove this ?
Appreciate your help.

Strange characters in azalea barcode

I have azalea barcode I2of5 in a crystal report 2008 sp2 report that show strange characters such as paragraph symbols in barcode image.
See the image:
[[http://i39.tinypic.com/eqpjbp.jpg]]
The OS is win7 64bits
What's wrong is going on?

Hello,
This is a known issue with Microsoft's GDIPlus dll, We can't fix it. Try updating your Video drivers and/or change your DPI settings, may help.
CR - ADAPT01538982
Only other option is to try a different True Type Barcode font, don't use the Convert to Barcode in the UI, just simply set the fields font to the TT barcode font.
Don

Sqlplus shows unreadable characters !

Hi,
this is my first time running oracle 11g r2 on my laptop with windows 7-OS 32-bit . It means I am totally newbie with Oracle and sql. So I need your help with my problem.
when I start sqlplus.exe . It shows strange characters like this :
http://i52.tinypic.com/11rt0rk.jpg
thanks in advance.

BANNER
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production
PL/SQL Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production
CORE 11.2.0.1.0 Production
TNS for 32-bit Windows: Version 11.2.0.1.0 - Production
NLSRTL Version 11.2.0.1.0
while installation wizard, I think there was an option for character set . I just let it as default without changing it to something else.

PDF file contains strange characters and letters.

PDF file shows strange characters and letters. Why does this happen? How do I correct this so I can print print the file?

This is probably due to fonts not be embedded in the pdf or too many different font subsets. If it is the former issue, you need to contact the creator of the pdf and have them embed the fonts. You cannot do it, since if you had the fonts on your system, it would ok. If it is related to font subsets you could try to unembed all fonts in the pdf using the PDF Optimizer, then re-embed the fonts using the Preflight tool.

Static VI with Visa serial functions is very slow to display front panel

THere is a delay time of about 10-20 seconds to "display" the first VI's front panel that has Visa serial functions in the source code.
All works fine after the first load but the initial delay of the front panel load makes it look like the PC could hang during this time. AFter this other VI's load immediately with no delay. I am concerned because I do not want to have to load a VI manually every time I start the APP which is the only workaround I can do at this time.
Im wondering if anyone else has seen this kind of behaviour.
I do not remember this happening until I upgraded my APP to LV7.
DEll optiplex GX260 with 500MB RAM, Win2k and using N.I PCI-232-16 card w/ LV7 now.
Attachments:
RECV_LOOP.vi ‏55 KB

I would like to resurrect this thread, as I am having the same problem. The problem stems from the VISA resource control on my front panel, because I have many COM ports registered on my system. The last suggestion from Scott B. was to "post the resulting .SPY file and I'll take a look at it". So, here is my .SPY file, and as you can see, it takes far too long. As many of these COM ports were registerd from USB converters, most of them are not actually present at this time on the system. However, even the ports that ARE present take a long time to register (i.e. COM1 is present and shows 3 seconds to register). These COM ports shown in my VISA resource do not correspond to those shown in my Device Manager, nor do they correspond to those shown in MAX under Devices and Interfaces.
I am using LV 7.0 on WinXP SP2, with VISA version 3.2.
OK, I just discovered something that mostly cured the delay. When I was getting the VISA version number just now, from MAX in the Software>NI-VISA item, there is a tab "VISA Options", and another tree structure in the middle pane. Selecting "General Settings>Aliases", there was a list of the old COM ports, so I cleared this list and then re-started MAX, checked again, and now only the COM ports shown in "Devices and Interfaces" matched this list (which still doesn't match my Device Manager, but no matter). When I re-opened the LabVIEW FP, it opened quickly, and the ports listed in the VISA resource matched those I saw in MAX.
At any rate, although I just cured the symptom, the original problem of old aliases in VISA causing unacceptable delay should be fixed by NI.
David Moerman
TruView Technology Integration Ltd.
P.S. the message poster didn't allow my to post a *.spy extension, so here is the *.zip of it.
Attachments:
Capture.zip ‏2 KB

Problem on WinXP / Labview 6.1 with VISA (serial port)

There is a problem on WinXP / Labview 6.1 with VISA which i use to poll the state lines of the serial port. The only functions that i use are "VISA Open", "Find Resource", line state properties and "VISA close".
On my own machine (WinME) it works fine as a standalone application (with runtime engine in the same direction), even if i rename the Labview directory so that Labview is not found.
From my VXIpnp directory i deleted all but these files:
directory "Win95",
subdirectory "Bin" containing "NiViAsrl.dll",
subdirectory "NIvisa" containing "visaconf.dll".
When shipping this to WinXP (and copying "VXIpnp" to the root directory), the serial port was not found, so i renamed the direction "Win95" to "
WinNT", but this did not work also.
I installed the VISA server, although it seems not to be required -- no result.
Final question:
What must i do for distributing the program as a standalone application for all windows platforms?

Hey Joachim,
In order to create an installer that includes the VISA Run-time engine for serial IO you will have to purchase LabVIEW 7.x. See screen shot. This packages a small compact version of the run-time that can only be used for serial, but it takes up much less space. The installer that I created has my application, the LV Run-time, and the VISA run-time and it is about 26 MB.
That is much smaller than if I had to include the 32 MB LV 7.1 run-time and the 14 MB VISA run-time separately. It would have been even smaller if I would have uncheck some of the items that I wasn't using.
-Josh
Attachments:
advanced.JPG ‏31 KB

Serial port: from 6i without visa to 7express with visa ?????

upgrading from NT4 6i max 2.5 to 2000 7exp max3.1 my pzt on PC serial port do not move anymore. The DA converter do not understand the instructions.
Running max on the coms: done OK
Looping back the visa instructions: done instructions OK
Trying hyperterminal: done OK (the DAC move)
the coms are in function but the DAC do not move while driving with visa...any suggestion??

I also upgraded from LV6.1 to LV7 and use serial communication. I now use VISA (and prefer it). However, for the older functions.. they should work..
Have you looked into the VISA Advanced controls under Interface Specific and under "Serial". You may find the functions you need to "upgrade" your serial comm vi's.
-JLV-

My Lightroom 5 upgrade serial number not showing up on My Products page; chat support useless

I purchased a Lightroom 5 upgrade license on July 25th. I didn't receive a confirmation email but my serial number was displayed on the order summary page after purchase. I tried registering the serial number repeatedly through the My Products page but for some reason the serial number wasn't showing up, even though the registration process reported a successful result. Furthermore, Adobe products bought from the Adobe store should automatically be registered according to Adobe's web site. Apparently this must have failed. I need to reinstall Lightroom 5 but the serial number is still not showing up on the My Products page. I just spent an extremely frustrating hour with Adobe "Live" chat who did nothing but send me in circles and repeat the same canned responses over and over again.
I'm currently on hold with "phone support" but I'm not optimistic as I've been on hold for 28 minutes. The only other support option was a link to this forum, hence this post. Hopefully someone from Adobe can retrieve my serial number and contact me. Failing this my only other option will be to contact VISA and open a claim.
My comical-if-it-weren't-so-sad conversation with Adobe support:
Hi, there are 36 customer(s) in line ahead of you. We'll be with you as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
Hi, there are 35 customer(s) in line ahead of you. We'll be with you as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
Hi, there are 31 customer(s) in line ahead of you. We'll be with you as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
You are now chatting with Bhagawan.
Bhagawan: Hello! Welcome to Adobe Customer Service.
Joel: Hello
Bhagawan: Hi Joel.
Joel: I need to reinstall Lightroom 5 but my serial number is not showing up under My Products & Services on the website
Joel: I bought a Lightroom 5 upgrade back in July
Bhagawan: I will be glad to check and help you with this issue.
Joel: For some reason the product registration is not showing up under my account. I have my VISA transaction info if it helps you find my purchase.
Joel: Thanks
Bhagawan: I'll be right with you.
Joel: ok
Bhagawan: Okay.
Bhagawan: May I know the email address, please?
Joel: ******
Bhagawan: Thank you.
Bhagawan: Let me check on this.
Bhagawan: For security reasons, could you verify your complete name and billing address as mentioned on your account please?
Joel: Sure:
Joel: Joel ****
Joel: **********
Bhagawan: Thank you Joel.
Bhagawan: Joel, I see that your serial number is registered under your adobe account, please sign out and sign in your adobe account click on My Products and service information to retrieve the serial number.
Joel: I only see Lightroom 4 ... not Lightroom 5.
Joel: But I'll try
Joel: Give me a sec
Bhagawan: Sure.
Joel: Nope...still only shows Lightroom 4
Joel: Products in use Version Platform Registration date Lightroom 4 Mul October 4, 2012 Register new products
Bhagawan: Okay.
Joel: Not sure why it isn't showing my upgraded license for Lightroom 5
Bhagawan: Please give me a minute or two.
Joel: ok
Bhagawan: Sure.
Bhagawan: Thanks for staying online.
Joel: np
Bhagawan: Joel, In this case, I'll transfer this chat to our Concern Team to check and help you with the serial number.
Joel: ok
Bhagawan: Please stay online.
Joel: ok
Please wait while I transfer the chat to the appropriate group.
You are now chatting with Naveen R.
Naveen R: Sorry for the wait. Please do stay online.
Naveen R: Hello! Welcome to Adobe Customer Service.
Joel: ok
Joel: Hello
Naveen R: Hi Joel.
Naveen R: I understand that you are unable to locate the serial number.
Joel: I purchased Lightroom 5 on July 25, 2013 as an upgrade for Lightroom 4. I need to reinstall Lightroom 5, but my serial number is not showing up in the products & services page.
Joel: I looked through my email receipts and couldn't find an order confirmation (or anything from Adobe related to my recent purchase.) After purchasing the upgrade, the serial number was displayed and I thought I had registered it using the Adobe account portal
Joel: Apparently, this didn't work. I have my VISA transaction information if required.
Naveen R: Thank you for the information.
Naveen R: I will be glad to check and help you with that.
Joel: Thanks
Joel: As I mentioned to the previous agent, when I got into My Products on the Adobe portal, I can see my Lightroom 4 info, but the Lightroom 5 Upgrade info isn't there.
Joel: got = go
Joel: sry
Naveen R: Thank you for waiting. One moment please.
Joel: ok
Naveen R: I'll be right with you.
Naveen R: Sorry for the wait. Please do stay online.
Joel: ok
Naveen R: Thank you for waiting. One moment please.
Naveen R: Sorry for the wait. Please do stay online.
Joel: Will it take much longer?
Naveen R: Let me check on that.
Joel: Are you alive?
Naveen R: I'm sorry due to application error I'm unable to check on that.
Joel: Can I please get a phone number to call? My only other choice would be to open a claim with VISA for fraud since Adobe seems unwilling to help in this matter
Naveen R: I will provide the steps to locate the serial number on your Adobe account.
Joel: I already know how to look for a serial number. The problem is that it doesn't show up in the Adobe account portal.
Naveen R: Please login under a different browser.
Joel: Already tried. Used IE then Chrome
Naveen R: Delete the cookies refresh your browser.
Joel: Same problem
Joel: Please provide me with a number to call
Naveen R: *Once you login to the Adobe account, click on "My products" under the "My products and services".
Naveen R: *There you can locate the serial number which you have registered.
Joel: I've already done that.
Joel: It is NOT listed
Joel: Which I've been saying for the past 40+ minutes
Naveen R: May I know the email address you logged into Adobe account?
Joel: ******
Naveen R: Thank you.
Joel: ...
Naveen R: Thank you for waiting. One moment please.
Naveen R: I see that your serial number is registered under your account.
Joel: Lightroom 5
Naveen R: I will provide you the serial number via email after ending this chat.
Joel: ok but please make sure it isn't Lightroom 4 but my Lightroom 5 serial number
Naveen R: Yes. Due to some technical error you are unable to locate it.
Joel: ok please send the serial number
Naveen R: Sure.
Naveen R: Is there anything else I can help you with?
Joel: No
Naveen R: You are welcome.
Naveen R: Thank you for contacting Adobe. We are available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Goodbye!
This chat session has ended.
Thank you for contacting Adobe.

OK, I was able to recover my previous system's image and thankfully it appears you can get the serial number from Help->System Info. I attempted to register the serial number again via the My Products page and while it indicated that the registration was successful, we'll see. At least I should be able to install LR5 on my new machine now.
Edit: I also just discovered that the serial number is listed under My Orders, but not under My Products. Weird. In my defence , I never thought to check My Order history because I never received a confirmation email and the order wasn't listed after purchase...even as late as mid-August (when I last checked.) Very strange but it's all good now.
Edit #2: OK now I just feel silly. I just received an email from Naveen with an actual support case AND the correct serial number. So, I stand corrected. The Live Chat process still felt incredibly long with some seemingly canned/automated responses but, in all fairness, he did get back to me. Thank goodness I washed both feet today...

Problem with visa 3.2

Hi all,
We have a problem with an application (LV7.1 / WXP) which has to decode serial data from a smart actuator. This actuator sends 8 bytes of data @38400 bps every 3ms (which leaves about 1ms interval between these blocks of data). The application is working perfectly with VISA 2.60 but since we tried it with VISA 3.20, we are constantly getting framing and I/O errors.
We are sure that the problem is coming from VISA, as we ran the software on the same PC with 2.60 and 3.20. The errors come only with 3.20.
An application engineer of NI told us that these errors were not implemented in the 2.60 version and that's why they didn't show up. However, the data that were read by the software with 2.60 were absolutely consistent (no garbage) ! If we filter these errors out, many data are lost, so this is not a solution.
The problems come either in development mode or with an executable file.
Does anyone know about the origin of these framing errors ? The signal is clean, no noise and Hyperterminal does not seem to have problems with it.
If it can help, we can provide a NI-Spy capture file.
Thanks to anyone who can give us some advice on this topic !

Hi Kaustubh,
Yes, either a Spy capture or some specific error codes would be great to continue troubleshooting this issue. Without more specifics, it is hard to say what errors that VISA 3.2 is catching that 2.6 did not. Hopefully we can help you further once a spy capture is posted.
Alternatively, if VISA 3.2 does catch some errors that did not harm your original program, or even errors that your original program depended upon, you could always go back to the previous version and use that one. Just wanted to be sure you were aware of that option.
john m
Applications Engineer

Adapt QCM serial port VIs for USB QCM

I am trying to adapt Labview VIs that use a serial port and use them a QCM that uses a USB port. Does anyone know how I can do this. I have limited labview experience.
The USB QCM gives me data for the thickness and mass gains of the materials deposited but I cannot correlate those mass gains with the pressures in the reactor. I need to correlate the mass gains with the pressures so I can know the pressure profiles of the materials I deposit. The serial port VIs (for a different QCM) save the data for the mass gain and the corresponding pressure but I cannot do that with the USB QCM. That is why I want to adapt the older programs which store all the information and use it with the new QCM.
Thanks
-Sicelo

You would likely want to use VISA to communicate with this USB device. If you get the VISA alias for the device, you should be able to replace your serial code with VISA code that does very similar things (such as read and write). This link shows the kind of thing you should encounter when using LabVIEW to control a USB device.

Adding an Ethernet Connected Oscilloscope to VISA I/O Through MAX

This is a repost of a previous Q with more info added:
I'm trying to connect a LeCroy WaveRunner 6051 (Oscilloscope) to the system through ethernet. However, I can see no ethernet port in the VISA I/O control (only my serial, parallel, and GPIB ports). So I was guessing that I needed to setup the ethernet port (using MAX) before I would be able to use it in LabVIEW.
I'm in the process of setting up a VISA TCPIP resource, but am having a bit of trouble with it. I guess the Oscilloscope is not VXI-11 compatible as no instruments are found when I try to setup a VXI-11 resource. Instead I'm trying to setup a Raw Socket. However I'm not sure of what the Port Number should be. Is this number pre-conf
igured to the instrument (do I need to look this number up somewhere), or do I just assign it and use it when I address the instrument? I know that the ethernet connection is working as I can transfer files from my computer to the oscilloscope and back through a shared folder.
I also noticed that I can add a remote system in MAX. This would require putting a VISA server on the Oscilloscope - I'm guessing that this is not what I should do to connect the oscilloscope.
Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks,
Russ

I just spent half a day configuring my laptop to interface with a TDS5054B scope from Tektronics. Couple of things to note:
1. Be sure that the firewall is not ON. My work laptop has extensive firewall protection; my personal laptop does not. That was crucial in getting a connection.
2. Be sure that the scope has TekVISA installed and that this server is RUNNING. There is a separate CD that came with the scope, and I had to install it.
3. Turn on the National Instruments VISA server.
4. Create a new interface by right mouse clicking the Devices and Interfaces key in the Measurement and Automation Explorer. If the scope is plug into the ethernet port with a CROSSOVER cable, and its VISA server is running, M&A Explorer should be able to find the device. You may not need to worry about knowing what the exact ethernet address is--unless you are not connected to the same subnet. Just select the TCP/IP resource, and things should naturally fall into place.
After I performed these steps (hopefully I didn't leave anything out), the VISA access was enabled to the scope. I hope everyone finds this useful. There is a link to the Tektronics website that was very helpful. I would place it here, but not sure that Tektronics would appreciate that.
John

Moxa Ethernet to Serial with Visa Showing Strange Characters

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for