The application runs on Windows only at this time (I just started using this development kit and I can run the application on Linux but making it distributable to other computers without having to install the whole SDK is turning out to be an annoyingly frustrating experience). You simply need to download this (18Mb download) and double click on port_scanner.exe and click on the "Scan ports" button (note that it may take a few seconds before it displays anything; the example below takes more than a few seconds).
This is what you will see:
This is an example done on my computer with an extreme example of what you could see after clicking on the "Scan ports" button and waiting for the result:
I extended the window to show all the ports and devices scanned (but you can simply scroll through the results if you prefer):
If you hover the mouse over a port or a device, that item name becomes italic and you get the information about the port or the device firmware whether the device is connected to a serial port of a CAN bus. You can see below (note that the mouse cursor is not visible in those screenshots but you can see what is selected because the text is in italic):
- a port with a USB to serial adapter with an FTDI chipset
- an MS3 with the pre1.3 alpha 9 firmware (the full definition does appear but is cut here since it falls outside the captured window)
- an IOx with the V0.1.1 firmware (the full definition does appear but is cut here since it falls outside the captured window)
If an MS-compatible device is connected to either a serial port or a CAN bus but cannot be identified by the application, you will get "Unknown device" as the name but you will still get the firmware identification if the device can provide it. This assumes that the devices use the same standards as all the MS2/Extra and MS3 firmware versions (all of my devices respect those standards).
This will eventually be expanded to include the IOx downloader and other utilities. So you will no longer need to select a downloader version depending on which IOx variant you have, which device it is connected to or if it is connected to a serial port or a CAN bus. You will also be able to change the CAN ID and set the RTC time from this upcoming version.
Jean