IrisControlsAPI Overview

Message Delimiter

The accent grave character ` (ASCII 0x60, 96) is used to signal the start of an IrisControls message. A newline or carriage return character \n \r (ASCII 0x0A, 10 and ASCII 0x0D, 13) signal the message end.

Fractions (floats)

The API only transmits 2's compliment integers in its messages. To transmit fractional data, elements may have a scaling factor assigned to them (default is 1). Data sent from the API is divided by the scaling factor when being interpreted. As a user interacts with data n the gui, it will be first multiplied by the scaling factor prior to sending to the device.

For example, for a device to transmit 1.865, it could assign a scaling factor of 1000 and transmit 1865.

As another example, say a slider had a scaling factor of 100 and was assigned bounds of 0 and 100; the user would be presented with a slider that moves between 0 and 1. If the user moved the slider to a value of 0.5, IrisControls would update the device with a value of 50.

Scaling factors are not required to be powers of 10.

Plotting

Two kinds of 2D plotting are possible: realtime or static.

Realtime Plotting

Any element containing data updates (sliders, display values, etc) can be attached to a realtime plot. Multiple data sources can be attributed to a single plot and selectively show or hidden.

Static Plotting

A finished plot can be transmitted from the device to the GUI by streaming the x and y coordinates of each data point for a given series on the plot.

API Messages

API Commands

Name	Syntax			Picture
	arg	type	argument description
noarg template	gendescription
`a
1arg template	gendescription
`a	arg1	u32	arg1description
2arg template	gendescription
`a	arg1	u32	arg1description
	arg3	s32	arg3description
3arg template	gendescription
`a	arg1	u32	arg1description
	arg2	s32	arg2description
	arg3	s32	arg3description
New Single Forward Slider	Creates a new single-sided slider at a specified location which increases from left to right
`g uid name min max init	uid	u16	the unique identity of the element. Must be unique from previously created elements.
	name	string	display name of the element. Must not contain whitespaces; underscores are converted to whitespace.
	min	s32	minimum slider value
	max	s32	maximum slider value
	init	s32	initial slider value
Set Scaling	Sets a scaling denominator for the element. Values sent to IrisControls from the API are divided by this value before showing on the GUI. Values read by the GUI due to user interaction are multiplied by this value prior to transmitting to the device.
`v uid scale	uid	u16	the unique identity of the element. Must be unique from previously created elements.
	scale	s32	the scale factor for the GUI element
Show Element	Displays the element, assuming it is located in a valid location and no other elements in that location are being shown
`s uid scale	uid	u16	the unique identity of the element. Must be unique from previously created elements.
Hide Element	Hides the element, and allows other elements to be shown it this element's location.
`h uid scale	uid	u16	the unique identity of the element. Must be unique from previously created elements.