What is it?

The Pykarbon module provides a set of tools for interfacing with the hardware devices on OnLogic’s ‘Karbon’ series industrial PCs. These interfaces include the onboard CAN bus, Digital IO, and a few other hardware devices.

The goal of this package is to provide a simple, but powerful, base platform that will allow users to quickly and easily integrate a Karbon into their own application.

The tools in this package are designed to work with specific hardware; this will not work for more generalized projects

How do I use it?

You will need to install python 3 prior to following this guide.

Getting started with pykarbon takes only a few minutes:

• Open up a terminal, and run pip install pykarbon

  • On some systems you may need to run as admin, or use the --user flag

• Launch a python shell with python

  • Usually linux users do not have write access to serial ports; grant your user permanent access with usermod -a -G dialout $USER or use sudo python

• Import pykarbon with import pykarbon.pykarbon as pk

• And finally create a control object using dev = pk.Karbon()

If all went well, you should now be ready to control a variety of systems, but for now, let’s just print out some configuration information:

• dev.show_info()

And close our session:

• dev.close()

What else can I do?

Pykarbon offers a number of tools for automating and using Karbon series hardware interfaces. These include:

• CAN and DIO background data monitoring

• Exporting logged data to .csv

• Registering and making function calls based on these bus events:

  • CAN data IDs

  • Digital Input Events

  • DIO Bus States (Allows partial states)

• Automated can message response to registered IDs

• Automated setting of Digital Output states

• Automatic CAN baudrate detection

• Updating user configuration information:

  • Ignition sense enable/disable

  • Power timing configurations

  • Low battery shutdown voltage

  • Etc.

• Firmware update

Additonally, as Pykarbon’s CAN and Terminal sessions must connect to device serial ports, functionality has been added to allow running these sessions using a context manager:

import pykarbon.pykarbon as pk
import pykarbon.can as pkc

with pk.Karbon() as dev:
    dev.show_info()

with pkc.Session() as dev:
    dev.write(0x123, 0x11223344)

A Simple Example: Pykarbon.Core

import pykarbon.core as pkcore

# Set up interfaces:
can = pkcore.Can()
term = pkcore.Terminal()

# Claim the serial ports for use:
can.claim()
term.claim()

# Configure the can baudrate, and view that config
term.command('set can-baudrate 800')

print("\nRead User Configuration:")
term.print_command('config')

# Write a message, and then listen for and print responses
can.send(0x123, 0x11223344)

print("\nMonitoring CAN Bus, Press CTRL+C to Stop!")
can.sniff() # Will block until you exit with ctrl+c

# Close the ports!
can.release()
term.release()