NAME

GPS::Lowrance::LSI - Lowrance Serial Interface Protocol module in Perl

REQUIREMENTS

The following modules are required to use this module:

  Carp::Assert
  Win32::SerialPort or Device::SerialPort

This module should work with Perl 5.6.x. It has been tested on Perl 5.8.2.

SYNOPSIS

  use Win32::SerialPort;                # or Device::SerialPort (?)
  use GPS::Lowrance::LSI 'lsi_query';

  my $port = new Win32::SerialPort( 'com1' );

  my $data = lsi_query( $port, 0x30e, "", 0 );

DESCRIPTION

This module provides very low-level support for the LSI 100 protocol used to communicate with Lowrance GPS devices.

(Higher-level functions and wrappers for specific commands will be provided in other modules.)

FUNCTIONS

lsi_query

  $data_out = lsi_query( $port, $cmd, $data_in, $id, $debug, $timeout );

This method submits an LSI query sentence (with the command and input data) to a GPS connected to the device specified by serial port at $port. (See the LSI specification on the Lowrance web site for the specific command codes.)

It then waits $timeout seconds (defaults to 30) for a response. If there is no response, it returns undef.

Otherwise, it verifies that the response is well-formed and returns the data. (The first 8-bytes of the returned data is the response header.)

The format of the rest of the data depends on the command.

If $debug is true, then debugging information is shown.

CAVEATS

This is an early release of the module, so likely there are bugs.

This module has not (yet) been tested with Device::SerialPort. Feedback on this would be appreciated.

Win32::SerialPort unfortunately has not been updated since 1999.

SEE ALSO

The Lowrance Serial Interface (LSI) Protocol is described in a document available on the Lowrance web site at http://www.lowrance.com.

AUTHOR

Robert Rothenberg <rrwo at cpan.org>

Please report any bugs using the CPAN Request Tracker at http://rt.cpan.org.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2004 by Robert Rothenberg <rrwo at cpan.org>.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.2 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.