Interfacing with the SICK LMS Laser

Posted by crow on August 8, 2008, 1:41 pm

Hi,

Does anyone know if an API is available under windows, Visual C++, for
interfacing a SICK LMS Laser to a PC ? The Laser itself comes with a
CD-ROM that only has a GUI. What do I do if I need to access the
readings from C++ code ? I have already tried ARIA and it is not
working. It connects to the laser, but gives a checksum error. The
laser is connected to the PC using a USB-to-serial interface.

Thanks
Regards
Crow

Posted by Juan Camilo on August 8, 2008, 3:20 pm

We had a problem like that with a scanner a while ago. We solved using
the dll that came with the manufactures application. You have to
install the driver normally and add a reference to the dll in your
project, once you have the reference you can access the methods it
has. It's a not an easy job but some times dll's are well documented
and you can start playing with the methods until you find what you
need.

Is not a proper how to, but I hope it helps.

Juan Camilo

> Hi,
> Does anyone know if an API is available under windows, Visual C++, for
> interfacing a SICK LMS Laser to a PC ? The Laser itself comes with a
> CD-ROM that only has a GUI. What do I do if I need to access the
> readings from C++ code ? I have already tried ARIA and it is not
> working. It connects to the laser, but gives a checksum error. The
> laser is connected to the PC using a USB-to-serial interface.
> Thanks
> Regards
> Crow

Posted by John Nagle on August 10, 2008, 3:42 pm

crow wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Does anyone know if an API is available under windows, Visual C++, for
> interfacing a SICK LMS Laser to a PC ? The Laser itself comes with a
> CD-ROM that only has a GUI. What do I do if I need to access the
> readings from C++ code ? I have already tried ARIA and it is not
> working. It connects to the laser, but gives a checksum error. The
> laser is connected to the PC using a USB-to-serial interface.
>
> Thanks
> Regards
> Crow

There's the manual, of course. You can download it from the SICK
site if you don't have it handy. The communication protocol is documented,
but totally non-standard.

I wrote a reliable SICK LMS driver for QNX for our DARPA Grand Challenge
team. It's non-trivial to write one that will consistently start up
correctly and recover properly regardless of the state of the LMS.
There are some very specific timing constraints, documented in the manual,
which must be obeyed. This works fine under QNX, but it's not easily
portable to non real time operating systems like Windows.

If you have one of the old serial port models that runs at 500,000 baud,
I suggest using a Sealevel Systems Ethernet to serial converter to talk to it.
Not many serial devices run well at that speed.

John Nagle

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