C/C++ driver for communicating with a Bloomy Controls Advanced Battery Simulator (ABS) via SCPI over TCP, UDP, and RS-485.

Features

TCP, UDP, RS-485, and UDP multicast
Modern, native C++20 library
Supports Windows and Linux
Implements all SCPI commands and queries supported by the ABS
Automatic device discovery over UDP multicast and RS-485 to quickly find and identify devices
Exception-less error handling (see below)
C wrapper (include/bci/abs/CInterface.h) for use in C and other languages
Easy inclusion in CMake projects
Python bindings

‍[!NOTE] Exceptions are not handled internally unless it is necessary to do so. Any exceptions thrown by this library are considered critical exceptional situations, such as a failure to allocate memory.

Example Usage (C++)

This example uses a UDP driver to query the device's information (equivalent to a *IDN? over SCPI). This library makes use of Sy Brand's excellent expected library to provide exception-less error handling. If this library throws an exception, it is considered an exceptional event, and is generally expected to be unrecoverable.

Note that the UDP driver's Open() function also has an overload which takes the local IP address to bind to. If you have multiple NICs, you probably want to use this option.

#include <bci/abs/ScpiClient.h>
#include <bci/abs/UdpDriver.h>
 
#include <iostream>
 
int main(void) {
  using ec = bci::abs::ErrorCode;
 
  auto driver{std::make_shared<bci::abs::drivers::UdpDriver>()};
  bci::abs::ScpiClient client{driver};
 
  auto ret = driver->Open("192.168.1.100");
  if (ret != ec::kSuccess) {
    std::cerr << "Failed to open device: " << bci::abs::ErrorMessage(ret)
        << '\n';
    return 1;
  }
 
  if (auto idn = client.GetDeviceInfo()) {
    std::cout << "Part number: " << idn->part_number << '\n';
    std::cout << "Serial number: " << idn->serial << '\n';
    std::cout << "Version: " << idn->version << '\n';
  } else {
    std::cerr << "Failed to get device info: "
        << bci::abs::ErrorMessage(idn.error()) << '\n';
    return 1;
  }
}

Example Usage (C)

This example implements the same logic as the C++ example above using the C interface.

#include <bci/abs/CInterface.h>
 
#include <stdio.h>
 
static void FormatErr(const char* msg, int ec) {
  fprintf(stderr, "%s: %s (%d)\n", msg, AbsScpiClient_ErrorMessage(ec), ec);
}
 
int main(void) {
  int ret = 1;
  int ec;
  AbsScpiClientHandle handle = NULL;
  AbsDeviceInfo idn;
 
  ec = AbsScpiClient_Init(&handle);
  if (ec < 0) {
    FormatErr("failed to initialize client", ec);
    goto cleanup;
  }
 
  ec = AbsScpiClient_OpenUdp(handle, "192.168.1.100", NULL);
  if (ec < 0) {
    FormatErr("failed to open device", ec);
    goto cleanup;
  }
 
  ec = AbsScpiClient_GetDeviceInfo(handle, &idn);
  if (ec < 0) {
    FormatErr("failed to get device info", ec);
    goto cleanup;
  }
 
  printf("Part number: %s\n", idn.part_number);
  printf("Serial number: %s\n", idn.serial);
  printf("Version: %s\n", idn.version);
 
  ret = 0;
 
cleanup:
  AbsScpiClient_Destroy(&handle);
 
  return ret;
}

Building

To build the driver as a shared library (.DLL or .so), first configure CMake, then execute the build system. This project can also be built with Visual Studio.

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON

cmake --build build

Adding to a CMake Project

In your CMakeLists.txt, fetch and link with the driver:

FetchContent_Declare(abs-driver
  GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/BloomyControls/abs-scpi-driver.git
  GIT_TAG v1.0.0
  GIT_SHALLOW TRUE
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(abs-driver)
 
target_link_libraries(my_program PRIVATE bci::absscpi)

If you have already installed the driver to a standard location on your system, you can use find_package instead:

find_package(absscpi 1.0.0 REQUIRED)
 
target_link_libraries(my_program PRIVATE bci::absscpi)

‍[!TIP] On Windows, the MSI installer will register the CMake package in the Windows registry, so the above example will build and link successfully. However, because the DLL is not located in the PATH environment variable, the DLL will fail to be found at runtime. To fix this, you can add a CMake command to copy the DLL to the build directory and you can add an install target to copy the DLL when installing your target.

Dependencies

This library does not have any runtime dependencies aside from the standard C/C++ runtime libraries on your system. However, it does have some build dependencies. If these are installed on your system, CMake will find and use them if your installed versions are compatible. Otherwise, it will automatically fetch and build them as part of the build. The build dependencies are:

fmt v10.2.1
Boost v1.81.0
FastFloat v6.1.1

These are all linked statically, regardless of the build configuration.

License

This software is distributed under the BSD-3-clause license. See the LICENSE file or https://opensource.org/license/BSD-3-Clause for details.