Overview of Sealevel Software
Comprehensive Software Solutions and Support
Sealevel hardware is backed by powerful software that makes installation and operation easy using Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. Click the appropriate link for detailed information on each of our software packages available for download, including specific operating system support.
Serial Communications
SeaCOM Asynchronous Serial Suite
SeaCOM for Microsoft Windows
Sealevel’s SeaCOM enhanced serial driver makes using the features of our board-based asynchronous serial products easy. In addition to being completely compatible with the Microsoft Windows Serial Driver, SeaCOM also makes use of advanced UART features without requiring changes to your software application. The user can preconfigure advanced features in the SeaCOM driver using Windows Device Manager. This allows your Windows application to communicate using 9-bit protocol, isochronous mode, automatically controlling the transmitter tri-stating when using RS-485, configuring appropriate devices for different electrical interfaces (e.g., EIA-530) and optimizing advanced FIFOs to make the most efficient use of the resources available to the application, all happening in the background and without requiring application support.
The Sealevel SeaCOM driver also gives similar capabilities for USB to serial adapters. Since our USB serial ports appear as traditional serial ports to the operating system, your application requires no changes or modifications. The user can preconfigure advanced features in the SeaCOM driver using Windows Device Manager. You can alias baud rates, change USB Latency Timers and configure other USB related timers and buffers to optimize the driver for your specific application requirements.
SeaCOM includes the Port Manager Utility that helps manage the serial ports. This allows you to change drivers, renumber the serial ports and alias data rates as appropriate to your serial device.
SeaCOM includes WinSSD that allows you to verify that your serial port is functioning properly, perform BERT tests and log data to a file for troubleshooting serial devices. WinSSD includes terminal emulation capability, so you can communicate directly with a serial device.
Additionally, SeaCOM software contains application notes and technical details.
SeaCOM for Linux
Sealevel serial adapters are compatible with the standard Linux 8250 serial and FTDI_SIO kernel drivers. In many cases, serial adapters will automatically work when recognized by the kernel drivers. For other cases, the Linux SeaCOM software package includes instructions for configuring a system and kernel drivers to recognize missing serial adapters.
Certain Sealevel serial adapters support 9-bit communication, which is not available in the kernel drivers. Linux SeaCOM software includes a patch file that shows how to add this common feature to the Linux kernel drivers.
Linux SeaCOM software also contains source code for several utilities and example applications that demonstrate communicate using standard and 9-bit serial adapters. The included utilities are also useful for configuring electrical interface modes in supported hardware.
SeaMAC Synchronous Serial Suite
SeaMAC for Microsoft Windows
SeaMAC for Windows provides a powerful WIN32 interface (CreateFile, ReadFile, WriteFile, etc.) for Sealevel synchronous serial products. While asynchronous communications has one standard character format, synchronous communications comes in many formats. Not only do we provide support for many popular protocols including HDLC/SDLC (MAC level), bisync, monosync, external sync and raw (bit-shifter) modes, we also allow the driver configuration to be done in two different ways. If you have an existing asynchronous serial application that you want to convert to synchronous mode, you can either write a simple application to preconfigure the driver and save this configuration as the default or you can run WinSSD, configure the device and save the configuration. If you are writing a new application or updating an older one, you can add one configuration command to your application to completely configure the driver to match your requirements.
Since synchronous protocols can be complicated, we provide a SeaMAC Configuration Utility that offers guided setup and configuration. This utility is knowledgeable of the values that need to be set for specific protocols and only allows you to select items that are appropriate for the protocol you are using.
SeaMAC includes WinSSD that allows you to verify that your synchronous serial port is functioning properly, perform BERT tests and log data to a file for troubleshooting serial devices. WinSSD includes terminal emulation capability, so you can communicate directly with a serial device.
Supplemental information can be found in Sync Support – Supported Clocking Options and Protocols.
SeaMAC for Linux
Sealevel Synchronous serial hardware support is provided by two Linux drivers. The Route56 driver supports the high-performance hardware based on the Zilog Z16C32 IUSC. Likewise, the SeaMAC driver supports hardware based on the Zilog Z85230 ESCC. Both drivers implement the standard TTY IO interface with most basic settings configured through standard termios API calls. Advanced hardware configuration is performed through custom driver IOCTL calls. Additionally, serial communications is performed using standard termios API calls.
Full source code for the Linux drivers is provided in the Route56 and SeaMAC software packages. Sample application code is included that demonstrates the use of common modes of synchronous communication formats, such as HDLC/SDLC, monosync, bisync and external sync.
To aid in testing communications, Route56 includes the r56util utility while SeaMAC includes the setseamac utility. These command line tools are capable of executing basic loopback and transmission tests.
SeaLINK Serial COM Port Redirector Suite
SeaLINK for Microsoft Windows
SeaLINK software drivers and utilities simplify the installation of Sealevel Ethernet serial servers. After installation, the serial ports appear as virtual COM ports to the host machine. Standard serial operating calls guarantee compatibility with legacy serial devices and enable backward compatibility with existing software applications. Serial tunneling is supported, allowing two native serial devices to communicate over a network without a computer. Alternatively, raw data socket mode is supported completely eliminating the need for a driver.
SeaLINK Config is a configuration application included with the SeaLINK Driver package for Windows. It allows easy configuration of RFC-2217 and RawTCP COM ports on the host machine. Ports can be configured either manually or through a device discovery interface.
NetSerial Monitor is packaged with the SeaLINK Drivers for Windows. It is a debug tool that allows monitoring of all redirected COM ports. It also provides trace functionality, including data and configuration messages and saving of trace logs.
SeaLINK devices can be configured via an onboard web server. Device configuration includes network configuration and default operating parameters configuration. Also available are password protection options for device settings. The web configuration pages can be configured to not require a password, require a password to edit settings or require a password to view and edit settings.
The SeaLINK Driver package for Windows includes a copy of WinSSD.
SeaLINK for Linux
SeaLINK hardware can be accessed through TCP/IP sockets or virtual TTY serial ports. The SeaLINK Linux package contains full source code for a virtual TTY driver and a driver configuration utility. SeaLINK hardware must be configured to use the custom Linux SeaLINK communications protocol when using the virtual TTY driver. The TTY driver implements the full TTY driver interface allowing the standard termios API calls.
WinSSD Serial Diagnostic Utility
WinSSD is a full featured synchronous and asynchronous diagnostic utility for Microsoft Windows operating systems. For asynchronous, synchronous and network serial troubleshooting, WinSSD allows the user to modify the default UART parameters, perform external loopback tests, toggle modem control signals and transmit test pattern messages.
WinSSD capabilities allow terminal mode operations, bit error rate testing and throughput monitoring. When used with a Sealevel synchronous serial adapter, the user has full control over electrical interface, framing method, transmit and receive clocking sources, communication bit-rate, oscillator frequency, CRC, preamble, clock encoding, sync character and more.
WinSSD is included and installed with SeaCOM, SeaMAC and SeaLINK software. You can also download a standalone version of WinSSD.
Digital I/O Interfaces
SeaMAX Digital and Analog I/O Software Suite
SeaMAX for Microsoft Windows
The SeaMAX Suite is a collection of configuration/diagnostic utilities and software libraries that enable rapid application development. The SeaMAX API, included in the SeaMAX Suite, provides a common application interface for Sealevel SeaI/O, SeaDAC, SeaDAC Lite and eI/O data acquisition modules. SeaMAX is designed to simplify application development by requiring little knowledge of the underlying communication protocols of these devices and eliminating the need for low-level programming. SeaMAX is available in an unmanaged library and a wrapper library that provides an interface to the API from managed code.
The Ethernet Configuration Tool is an application included in the SeaMAX Suite for Windows that allows for discovery of DHCP configured devices, and configuration of network settings on network based I/O devices, such as SeaI/O Ethernet, SeaI/O Wireless and eI/O modules. The tool also allows for recovery of a network device by MAC address if the network settings are not known.
The MaxSSD Configuration Utility is a diagnostic and test utility for all SeaI/O, SeaDAC, SeaDAC Lite and eI/O units. The utility allows you to view and change device settings. It also allows you to monitor and control the I/O banks of the unit for diagnostic purposes.
SeaMAX comes packaged with example projects for VB 6, C# and C++. Additionally, the included SeaMAX API documentation is available online in HTML format.
SeaMAX for Linux
The SeaMAX Linux package provides an API that supports SeaI/O, SeaDAC and SeaDAC Lite modules. SeaMAX Linux is primarily a Modbus communications package with features added to seamlessly integrate support for SeaDAC Lite modules. The SeaMAX API also contains an interface for detecting and configuring SeaI/O Ethernet modules. The Linux SeaMAX package includes full source code for the library and sample applications with HTML documentation that aids in rapid application development.
SeaIO Classic Digital I/O Drivers
SeaIO for Microsoft Windows
The SeaIO Classic software package is a Windows developer’s toolkit for Sealevel board-based and legacy USB Digital I/O devices. The SeaIO API provides a variety of useful high-level function calls implemented in a Windows dynamic link library (DLL) that gives access to the hardware from Windows-based platforms such as Visual C++. In addition to the API, SeaIO includes an ActiveX control along with sample code and utilities to simplify software development.
SeaIO utilities, with source code, allow you to test your devices after they are installed. Without writing any code, you can control outputs and monitor inputs. For configurable devices (i.e., TTL devices that allow you configure a port as an input or output), the direction can be easily configured on a port-by-port basis using Windows Device Manager.
SeaIO for Linux
The Sealevel SeaIO Linux package includes a kernel driver for board-based devices, a C/C++ library and a sample application that demonstrates C++ API usage. The kernel driver implements a simple character device with a number of useful IOCTL calls. To aid in application development, the SeaIO API wraps the driver IOCTL calls into a C-based function library. Additionally, the SeaIO API provides a C++ wrapper class. These APIs are fully documented in a PDF help file.
SeaIO includes the SeaIOTst utility that demonstrates the C++ wrapper class usage and can be used to test hardware functionality.
Embedded Application Development
R9 Software Development Kit for Microsoft Windows CE 6.0
The R9 Family of hardware application development is supported by the R9 SDK. Boot files for each hardware variant are provided to allow restoration to the factory-default operating system runtime.
The .NET Talos I/O Framework supports Sealevel R9 embedded RISC computing products. Talos includes low-level drivers for system I/O and provides numerous extensions to the Microsoft .Net Compact Framework that ease application development on SeaI/O and SeaDAC data acquisition modules. In addition to adding an easy-to-use, object-oriented interface for access to digital and analog I/O, the Talos Framework adds some features of the full .Net framework that are not available in the compact edition. Talos Framework documentation is included.
The included Atmel SAM-BA utility loads factory default and upgrade OS runtimes into NAND Flash.
Included sample application code demonstrates Talos Framework and .NET Compact Framework usage.
Supplemental Information
Additional information is available in our software support sections: