camcommand 0.3.8

Python CLI + library for Camlock USB-serial access control devices (CH340).

camcommand

Windows-first Python CLI + library for communicating with Camlock USB serial devices (CH340), including PICO Hub-style line commands.

Install

pip install camcommand

CLI usage

camcommand list
camcommand connect
camcommand send STATE
camcommand send UNLOCK
camcommand send TEMP
camcommand temp
camcommand interactive
camcommand --com COM15 reflash firmware.hex
camcommand --com COM15 dump backup.hex
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 send state
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 send unlock,3

ACS-200 (CAMCOMMAND hub) quickstart

ACS-200 uses different serial settings and command syntax than the 115200-baud lock devices:

• Serial settings: 9600 8N1, newline terminator LF (\n).
• Commands are typically lowercase and comma-separated (examples below).
• camcommand disables DTR/RTS by default for ACS-200 to avoid device resets on connect caused by control-line toggling (use --dtr on / --rts on only if your hardware requires it).
• camcommand waits briefly after opening the serial port before sending commands (default: 2 seconds) to allow the controller to finish initialization; override with --connect-delay.
• Some firmware variants prefix responses with a numeric status/event code (e.g. 6); camcommand will print a short decode to stderr and return that non-zero code as the process exit code.

Examples:

camcommand --com COM15 acs200 state
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 locks
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 unlock 3
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 --trace unlock 3
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 hold on
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 unlock all
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 output 1 on
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 outputs off
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 temp 10
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 interactive

Raw passthrough is still available if you want to send exactly what the firmware expects:

camcommand --com COM15 acs200 send get_state
camcommand --com COM15 acs200 send set_relock_duration,10

Optional multi-channel flag (reserved for ACS200-style devices):

camcommand send STATE --port 3

Python usage

from camcommand import SerialManager
from camcommand.serial_manager import SerialConfig

with SerialManager(SerialConfig(port="COM15")) as mgr:
    print(mgr.send_and_read_response("STATE"))

Example app

Run the included example script:

python examples\basic_demo.py
python examples\basic_demo.py --com COM15

Notes

• Commands are sent as complete lines terminated by \n (never character-by-character).
• Responses are read as line-based text; multi-line responses are collected until a blank line or timeout.
• Serial speed is fixed at 115200 baud.
• Package name on PyPI and the import/package name are both camcommand.
• For development installs from source, you can use pip install -e . from the project folder.
• reflash is standalone (no extra Python deps beyond pyserial) and targets the Camlock UPDI setup used by the reference flashing app.
• dump reads the entire flash over UPDI and saves an Intel HEX file.
• reflash vendors a subset of the pyupdi project (MIT); see camcommand/_pyupdi/LICENSE in the source distribution.

Linux quickstart

• Install: pip install camcommand
• List ports: camcommand list
• If you get PermissionError opening /dev/ttyUSB0, add your user to the dialout group and re-login:
  • sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER