Acquisition I/O Interface

A locally connected physical serial port. This is an input and output interface defined by the OS level name of the serial port.

A TCP connection to a remote server. This type of interface passes input and output data over a TCP connection initiated to a provided server and port. The most common use of this is to connect to a "serial to ethernet" type of converter box. However, it can also be used to connect to any type of general TCP server to exchange data.

A TCP connection to a CPD3 style I/O interface server. This functionality allows an instance of the I/O server to be started on a remote machine then another one to connect to to it and control a local interface. That is, this can be used as a replacement for a USB to IP converter type box, using a full computer to do the conversion. For example, the machine with the hardware connected to it would start an I/O server on the connected ports, while having its configuration specify a valid remote server. Then another one would have a CPD3Server style interface pointed at the first one. This interface then is allowed to change serial port parameters and reconfigure the local hardware as required.

Run an external command and communicate with it via its standard input and output channels. This allows for an external command to be a sink and/or source of data to an I/O interface. Note that the command may be restarted outside of its control (whenever the I/O interface re-initializes). It should also not use buffered output or should take care to flush the buffers or the I/O interface will not receive data in a timely fashion.

A server that listens for incoming TCP connections then exchanges data over any that are open. This type of interface waits for an incoming TCP connection then will and and receive data to any connections that are currently open.

This interface sends and receives data via UDP datagram packets. This type of interface accepts UDP packets for incoming data and takes their contents as a single input stream. Likewise, it packages outgoing data into packets and sends them to a remote host. Note that since the internal view of data is stream based, not packet based, the contents of where the UDP packets are split may not always coincide with single send and receives.

A multiplexer interface combines multiple sub-interfaces into a single composite one. It allows for arbitrary mixing of input and output channels into a final view. For example, it can be used to combine the input from two serial ports into a single logical stream. Similarly, it can be used to construct an interface that sends data out one serial port but receives data from another physically distinct one.

Since the multiplexer only forwards data and not parameters, all sub-interfaces must provide all parameters needed to configure themselves. For example, serial ports should provide a baud rate.

A bidirectional connection to a machine-local Qt-managed socket.

A bidirectional connection from a machine-local Qt-managed socket. This creates a socket that listens for other machine local communications then sends and receives data over all open connections.

Only supported on Unix. A bidirectional connection to a local Unix domain socket.

Only supported on Unix. A bidirectional connection from a local Unix domain socket. This creates a socket that listens for other machine local communications then sends and receives data over all open connections.

Only supported on Unix. This type of interface communicates with a set of Unix named pipes (FIFOs) that represent the three channels of communications. That is, it send data to the output pipe, and reads input and echo from their respective pipes.