Protocol Tool 0.9.19

The pro's too cool toy!

(In french: pour les protocoles qui collent pas trop!)

Summary

Protocoltool is a binary protocol development tool, used for communications. It sends strings formatted as bytes or a mixture of different features. Ex:

01 02 04 08 10 20 40 80 00 FF // bit test

55aa d'255

deadbeef

Purpose

It's useful for developing applications or firmware communicating over an interface (either the serial port, the parallel port, a socket, a pipe or other). Since developing some communication application involves 2 units, often developed simultaneously, protocoltool allows the development of the 2 units independently.

When a text protocol is used between two machines, only a terminal program is needed. But when the protocol involves binary values, such as non alphanumeric characters, a terminal program is not much useful. Some are capable of sending Hex values, but use only the serial port.

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Platforms

Protocoltool supports more interfaces on Linux than on other platforms. The needed libraries supporting those interfaces are not ported or are not available on other platforms yet. Autodetection of available serial ports or parallel ports is not available on all platforms.

Supported interfaces (linux)

Features (examples)

Development Status

Dependencies

How does it work?

The user loads a text file containing the strings to send. This file can be edited with any text editor or can be edited within the Protocol tool software. The software loads the first 30 lines of the text file. Strings are sent by clicking on the send buttons at the right of the main panel.

Screen captures

Since "An image is worth a thousand words", here are some screen captures.

Main window opened with some strings loaded

ASCII / Hex terminal window with time stamp

Settings dialog: one of the selected interfaces: serial.

Control Panel: one of the selected interfaces: serial.