Does anyone have a program to emulate a terminal like a vt100 or xterm?

[roger4sun]

I am looking add an interface to a LabVIEW program that will provide a smart "dumb terminal". The host is expecting a VT220 so hyperterm works but is not very useful. I would like to add features to automate the communication.

[Sean_C.]

Hello Roger4sun,

Thank you for contacting National Instruments.

I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you looking for an interface that will call LabVIEW code? I searched on google and found a number of sites that offered emulators for sale. The following link leads to a site that offers 30 day trials of a VT 100 terminal.
http://www.zephyrcorp.com/Downloads/terminal-emulator-download.htm

Let me know if you have more questions.

Sean C.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[Ben]

Hi Roger,

Take a look at

Help>>>Find Examples>>>Hardware Input adn Output>>>Serial>>>Serial Communications.VI

The VT100 was one of the first "dumb terminals" and was used to replace old teletypes and line printers.

The example I cited will let you specifiy a string you want to send out the serial port (like typing in hypertermial). It will then look for a response and show you what it gets.

That example should get you started.

Post updates if things get sticky.

Ben



Ben Rayner
Certified LabVIEW Developer
www.DSAuto
mation.com

[roger4sun]

Thanks to Sean and Ben for their responses. Each response is useful but I am actually looking for something a little different. My application needs to do five things.

1) communicate with the host via serial port or tcp/ip.
2) emulated the vt100 (xterm) display
3) direct input to host from the LV application
4) parse output from host into LV application
5) handle users input via the keyboard

The first is can be done with the examples from the serial vi's and internet tool kit. Tasks 3 and 4 are fairly straight forwards LV code. Task 5 can be handle by the "Global Text Box with Event Structure" and "keyboard.vi" from the LabVIEW development library. If anyone knows which approach is better please let me know.

The hardest part is trying to make
sense of all of the escape sequences that the host spits out and try to present something that the use can look at. The commercial application that Sean found looks like it will be able to handle the display on serial or tcp/ip. I would still try and figure out how to manage the LV application interfaces.

What I am looking for most is something written in LV that can handle at least some of the display functions and I can write the rest.

Thanks Roger

[Ben]

Try enabling flow control (not hardware handshaking). That should handle all of the X-on and X-off's.

The only things you have to cover then are FF and LF.

The other characters may not even come up if you are not using the device to do editing of commands.

Your termination character will be CR, probably.

Ben

[Berni]

Hi,

Did you succeed last? I've got a similar problem. My server needs a VT220 emulation, if not I can't go further than the login.

How can I get running the "Telnet Client Line".vi example on vt220 over TCP/IP? How can I change the protocol parameters there (like in hyperterminal or putty)?

The server denies the input while saying the terminal type "dumb" is not accepted.

Berni

Message Edited by Berni on 10-24-2005 01:24 PM

Message Edited by Berni on 10-24-2005 01:26 PM

[Don_Lee]

I seem to find myself in this same situation, I have a need to have LabView send and display VT100 msg/controls that are coming from the UUT via serial and later, thru a telnet session. Has anyone develop a VI to handle these types of data?

[sarahk]

Hi, dglee359.

For questions on using VT100 using serial, I recommend you check out this thread. To use telnet from LabVIEW, however, requires the Internet Toolkit (which contains several telnet VIs). There are no specific VIs or settings for VT100 in that toolkit, but a quick search on Google produced this manual on emulating the VT100 protocol. If you're interested in the Internet Toolkit and would like a quote, I can have someone contact you if you give me your email address.

Good luck!

[Dennis_Knutson]

I once started on this and gave it up after a short while. Implementing a full VT100 emulation was going to take to long of a time with all of the control codes that needed to be parsed. It was sort of like writing your own web browser in LabVIEW to parse all of the HTML codes. What I did instead was use HyperAccess from http://www.hilgraeve.com/ who also are the authors of Hyperterminal that comes with every version of windows. There is a nice ActiveX interface to HyperAccess.

[knipph]

Hi Roger,

we used WebConnect from Ericom http://www.ericom.com/ ,  this software gives you a terminal on a web-page.

In my LV application I put on a Tabcontrol a Active-X box to the Webbrowser with an URL to the WebConnect page.

On the terminal "Tab" the VT terminal is presented, on the other tabs I build the other user applications.

Huub