User Guides
The PMD Resource access Protocol (PRP) is used to communicate with PMD products incorporating a C-Motion Engine (CME), as well as products with Ethernet interfaces. These products include the Prodigy/CME family of motion control cards, the ION/CME digital drive, and the Ethernet/Serial ION digital drive.
PRP provides several key features in the devices where it is used:
- A wide range of hardware resources may be addressed, for example, multiple on-card communication
peripherals and C-Motion Engines. - The PRP addressing scheme allows general networking, for example, it allows PRP devices to act as
network bridges. - Allows extension to new classes of devices and device resources, and allows easy interfacing with user-written C-Motion Engine programs.
This manual documents the software interfaces and binary protocols used for control of all PRP-based devices, including Prodigy/CME and ION/CME, as well as all PMD Ethernet devices. Collectively these will be called “PRP devices”.
The procedures and data types documented here are used both for programs running on host computers, and user programs running in the C-Motion Engine. Software libraries in source form are provided to implement PRP communication on Windows® host computers. Library code is also provided for control of Magellan Motion Processors, either as part of a PRP device or separately, for example non-CME ION modules or non-CME Prodigy cards. This library code is called C-Motion, and its use is documented in the C-Motion Magellan Programming Reference. In many cases there is a close correspondence between the C language library procedures and PRP messages that may make the PRP documentation useful for understanding how to control PRP devices, even for PRP device users who are not implementing a PRP interface library.
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