Control and integration

RS232

Serial control in and out

RS232 is the oldest way into the Diva and still the most predictable. The same socket also lets the Diva send commands out to a projector.

RS232 is a serial interface standard first published in 1960 and still the way most professional AV equipment is controlled. One wire carries data in each direction, a third is ground, and both ends have to agree on baud rate, data bits, parity and stop bits before a byte means anything at all.

Its virtue in a rack is that it is unglamorous and deterministic. There is no addressing, no discovery and no network: a command goes down the wire and the device at the other end either understands it or does not. Nothing between the two ends can delay it, drop it or decide to update itself, which is why installers still reserve serial for the function that has to work every time.

The connector is not part of the standard. A DB9 is traditional, but plenty of equipment uses a 3.5mm jack or a screw terminal, and a USB to serial adapter presents the same link to a computer that has no serial port left.

RS232 on the HDfury Diva

The Diva takes serial control on a 3.5mm jack rather than a DB9, using the supplied cables. TIP is TX, sending data out from the Diva; RING is RX, receiving data into it; SLEEVE is ground. The link runs at 19200 baud, no parity, one stop bit and no handshake, which a control system that wants those stated separately will accept as 19200, n, 1. Other rates are available under Baud Rate in the OLED menu: 19200, 57600, 115200 or 9600.

The socket works in both directions. It is how a Mac, Windows or Linux machine drives the unit, and it is also how the Diva drives something else: macros send the RS232 command strings you have defined to an RS232 capable display when the incoming signal type changes, so a projector can switch picture mode the moment HDR10 arrives. Before writing any of that, use the RS232 COMMAND field, RS232 BAUD RATE, Send Ascii and Send Binary in the CEC and RS232 section to send one command by hand and prove the wiring.

How a command is formed

• Every RS232 command starts with the header #diva and ends with either a carriage return or a newline.
• To write a value, send #diva set x y, where x is the target and y is the value or values. To read one, send #diva get x.
• Use only lowercase characters throughout.
• Every response the Diva sends back has both a carriage return and a newline appended, so a parser can rely on a consistent line ending.
• The same commands work over IP and telnet with the #diva header removed, on port 2210 by default.

Routing input 2 to the TX0 output, for example, is #diva set inseltx0 2 over serial and set inseltx0 2 over the network. The full list is searchable in the manual and a copy ships as a text file in every firmware update package, which is the copy to use because commands are added over time.

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