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SRc serial command reference


Erin Bliss

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AS NOTED BELOW, any use of this information in entirely AT YOUR OWN RISK and may damage your equipment.

Being a huge nerd I simply had to try connecting in to my SRc via serial.  I haven't had any luck finding a command reference from Lectro but I've been able to get it talking to my mac over USB, and I've figured out the serial equivalents of most of the menu items.  I'll attach what I've found so far.  The things I can't yet get to happen are IR sync, scanning, and smart tune.

 

Some or all of this may be wrong, this is just an afternoon's hacking project.  Feel free to correct me where needed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SRc (1).txt

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The online help in Wireless Designer contains a section on serial commands.  I don't see anything specific to the SRc, but there are sections on Venue1, Venue2, DR, DSQD, M2T; and the commands from one unit to another generally follow the same format.

 

Note that command reference in the online help does not appear to have been updated to reflect all firmware changes.  For example, the Venue1 "channel" command is documented as taking a parameter from 0-255 for 100kHz steps; but the command actually takes a parameter from 0-1023 for 25kHz steps.

 

If the SR is like the Venue1, you might enjoy trying the commands "su?" or "p".  On the Venue1 these undocumented commands are used by Wireless Designer and provide an "ASCII-compatible-binary" version of the complete setup and status respectively.

 

But be careful - it is possible to break things by writing the wrong thing to certain parameters.

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I looked again, and "su" does not appear to apply to the SRc.

The following additional commands "should" be there though.  I expect many of them exist for factory setup and/or testing and as such will either be boring or dangerous.

 

"buttons" - I expect an instantaneous status of what buttons are pressed.
"lockdet" - something to do with a PLL lock?
"divtest" - sounds like "diversity test" but what exactly that means...

"extvcc" - wouldn't be surprised if it was a power supply voltage
"rpixel" - screen testing, perhaps?
"windet" - sounds like it may be a status of a window detector circuit of some sort... 

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This is important so I am putting it into a separate post.  Experimenting with these commands is dangerous, as commands to not always do what you might expect.  I will use the "block" command as an example, because you mentioned it in your file as writable, and I messed something up myself doing exactly that.

 

Documentation for the command in the context of the VRM(WB) - which is block based, and doesn't know the concept of the 3-block bands - indicates that:

* The query form of the "block" command, without parameters, reports the block of the receiver frame

* The query form of the  "block" command, with a receiver designator (1-6, or * for all) reports the block(s) of the corresponding receiver module(s) installed.

* Note that for the VRM(WB) the "set" form of the command is not documented, and indeed makes no sense for a user in this context.  However,  it is entirely possible that the write form of the command may exist and could be a mechanism for configuration at the factory.

 

 

Now move to another device, the HMa.  Serial commands for this device are entirely undocumented, but they do exist through the USB interface.  Since the HMa is a band-based device, and setting the channel requires you to also set a block, you might think that the "block" command would be a mechanism of tuning the transmitter.  But in fact, the "block" command in the HMa works just like the command does in the VRM(WB):

* The query form of the "block" command returns the base block of the unit's band.  So, an HMa A1 will report block 470.

* Setting the "block" parameter WILL RECONFIGURE THE FIRMWARE to use that block as the base of the tuning range.  I know this by experience.  In my case I was working in block 20 and in my experimentation I believe I must have sent the command "block=20".  Everything appeared fine.

 

But months later, I had cause to change the frequency to somewhere in block 470.  I found that the transmitter refused to tune below block 20, even though it was an A1 unit.  I called Lectrosonics and the tech there told me it needed to be sent in to the factory.  After a bit of thought I guessed that my previous experimentation might have caused the problem.  I figured it was worth a try to reverse my mistake.  After all, I was about to send it in anyway.  Setting the block back to 470 appears to have corrected the problem.  When the tech followed up with me I told him what I had done and that it appeared to work fine now.  I got a response something like, "I have no idea where you might have gotten the information you used to do that fix.  That is certainly not something we at the factory would have given out.  You could have bricked your unit."

 

So, long story short, BE CAREFUL.

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21 hours ago, Neil Bliss said:

(Frankly I'm surprised I haven't gotten a note from someone at Lectro asking me to take this down yet...)

Why would we? We don't make any money on selling software, firmware or mushware. I talked to Gordon at lunch and he said there is no easy way to permanently brick a unit with serial commands that isn't easily fixed with the usual downloads from the Lectro site. If you can play with the commands to make the SRc more useful, Babbage bless. Gordon will post here about who to talk to at Lectro. At the moment he is getting his hands dirty, remodeling the production offices. Some of the ne'er-do-wells at Lectro took pictures saying, "Now I can show my wife that Gordon does do work here."

Best Regards,

Larry Fisher

 

 

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24 minutes ago, LarryF said:

Why would we? We don't make any money on selling software, firmware or mushware. I talked to Gordon at lunch and he said there is no easy way to permanently brick a unit with serial commands that isn't easily fixed with the usual downloads from the Lectro site. If you can play with the commands to make the SRc more useful, Babbage bless. Gordon will post here about who to talk to at Lectro.

Reason #2,633 on why to love Lectrosonics.  Off to film in ABQ starting Sunday, are the rumors true that if you are close in the vicinity of an SM series' homeland of Rio Rancho, the tumbleweed gods bless you with great range and no drop outs?  Then again, who am I kidding, I rarely have an issue with Lectro's and if I do, usually it's a user 1D10T error 😀 (also I checked your convenient spreadsheet online and it looks like it will be easy sailing with my 19/20 stuff).

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