ThermoSight recently created a new, general-purpose SoE package combining our own proprietary software with the AXIS 2490 Serial Server. We chose the 2490 for a variety of reasons, perhaps the most important of which is reliability. It's made by AXIS so we knew that (a) it would work as advertised, and (b) that it was rugged and reliable. There are other serial servers out there, but in this case at least, it costs only a little more to go first-class!

The software driver we wrote is, admittedly, a work-in-progress but it meets the requirements set forth in our client's document. While it is a general-purpose driver that can read and write ordinary text strings, our client specified that it be tailored to their camera configuration, a Sony camera mounted on a PELCO p&t mount. Consequently, in addition to text strings, it also issues PELCO 'D' and Sony VISCA commands, and reads and decodes the responses.

The .NET application below is a subset of the actual program. PELCO 'D' support is absent, and the VISCA support is limited to only a few camera instructions. And to minimize the download burden, the VISCA support is compiled-in rather than being read from an external file.

Still, with these limitations in mind, if you would like to "take it out for a spin", and your PC is equipped with Microsoft's .NET framework, then we invite you to download the application and follow the instructions here to connect to our AXIS 2490 (while it's available).

You may also download the pseudo-server and communicate with that on your machine (in loopback (=127.0.0.1) or install it on another machine on your LAN or elsewhere on the internet. The pseudo-server is a piece of throw-away code which does not (yet) speak VISCA or PELCO 'D', but it will give you an idea of how the package works.