$Id: README,v 1.8 2011/11/01 20:18:29 poc Exp $

IMPORTANT
=========
This code does no longer compile out of the Box on a Debian 11 machine.
I do no longer own the necessary DPS, so I am not interested in maintaining
the code anymore.

The source code has been available on Freshmeat.net for years, but I'm now
publishing it on Github for completeness.

poc@pocnet.net, 2022-07-05

WHAT IT IS
----------
Dpsctrl may be used to read values and control parameters on Conrad
Electronic's Voltcraft brand power supplies DPS-2010, DPS-4005 and DPS-8003. It
also is usable with SNNT-2010pc, SNNT-4005pc and SNNT-8003pc PSUs. Thanks to
Peter Schildmann for this feedback! You may use it interactive (in curses mode)
or set your values via command line options (useful for batches).

Beware, there seems to be an old release of the DPS-4005 with different serial
pinout and a completely different protocol (ASCII based). Dpsctrl could *not*
handle this device (yet - get me the protocol description and I'll try to
implement this). Thanks to Volker Arndt for bringing this to my attention!

Dpsctrl tries to open the (serial) device identified by the environment
variable DPSDEVICE (full path). It should point to the device file with the dps
connected to.
If DPSDEVICE is not set, Dpsctrl per default tries to open /dev/dps which can
be a symbolic link to the appropriate serial port device on your system. Since
udev is now used in every recent distro, I recommend setting DPSDEVICE in
your ~/.profile.

INSTALLATION
------------
You normally need only to type "make" to make dpsctrl, then you may do a
"make install" it with its Manpage into /usr/local. If you want it somewhere
different, change DESTDIR in the Makefile.

If you have trouble compiling dpsctrl, comment out the CURSESCFLAGS and
CURSESLDFLAGS in the Makefile and try again. Please report a bug to
poc@pocnet.net with some detail of your setup and any error messages you
receive.

USAGE
-----
See manpage for usage details.

BEFORE-EOF
----------
Dpsctrl has been developed under Linux but should compile fine under any
unix-like OS. It has been tested on a rather old 386DX40 machine with 8MB RAM,
linux-1.1.59/glibc 4.5.26, a very ancient version of ncurses and a DPS-8003. I
also compiled it on Solaris 2.7. It runs fine so far.

To stay compatible with this old setup (a Slackware 2.1.0) I didn't use
anything fancy up to version 2.0. Especially in curses mode: no setwbkg, no
forms.

Report Bugs, porting successes, questions, chocolate, pizza and other things to
poc@pocnet.net.

Dpsctrl is licensed to you under the terms of the GPL version 2 or higher, if
applicable.

PoC - 2011-11-01