Firefly Simulator User's Manual
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Firefly Simulator User’s Manual
Connections
Power/USB
Physical LEDs
Aphysical LED consists of a small circuit board connected to a cable that can be connected to the simulator. An
actual LED is mounted on the circuit board, as well as other components that are used to regulate and limit the
electrical current through the LED.
Up to six physical LEDs can be simultaneously connected to the simulator, by plugging their cables into the six
LED channel connectors on the side of the simulator.
It is the user’s responsibility to mark each physical LED with a unique identifier and maintain records of the
optical characteristics of that LED. It is also the user’s responsibility to track which physical LED is connected to
each LED channel.
Abort Button
Communications
The firefly simulator communicates with a host computer using a serial communications interface, which is called a
COM port in Windows or a /dev/tty in Linux and MacOS. This interface can be used to configure the simulator
and to log its operation.
The simulator has been programmed to operate at 9600 baud with 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, and no flow
control.
The user can send commands to the simulator using a terminal simulator program on the host computer, and
the simulator’s responses will also appear on the terminal. The command messages sent by the host computer are
simple strings of text. Each command begins with one or two capital letters, followed by some number of fields or
parameters for the command. The different fields of a message are separated by a comma. Each command must
be terminated with a carriage return and/or linefeed, which are typically added just by pressing the “Enter” key.
Virtual LEDs
The simulator software has no information about what, if any, physical LEDs are connected to its LED channels.
Instead, the simulator software is configured to control virtual LEDs. A virtual LED is defined by assigning to it a
physical LED channel number as well as a maximum brightness value (0 to 100). Note that the maximum brightness
level is treated as a percentage of the maximum current available to the physical LED. For example, if a particular
physical LED circuit board has been designed to limit the LED current to 20 mA, and then setting the maximum
brightness of a virtual LED to 50, will result in an average LED current of 10 mA when the LED is “on”.
Each virtual LED has a unique LED number, which is simply an integer used to identify a particular virtual LED
so it can be used later. The simulator can typically store up to 16 distinct virtual LED definitions.
Note that a given LED channel (i.e. a given physical LED) can be used in more than one virtual LED definition.
This allows the same physical LED to be used at different brightness levels.
The command message used to configure a virtual LED begins with the letter ‘L’ and has three fields: the virtual
LED number, the LED channel number, and the maximum brightness level. The fields must be integer values. For
example, the commands shown below will first configure virtual LED #7 to use the physical LED on channel 3 with
a maximum brightness equivalent to 80% of its maximum possible current. Virtual LED #1 is then configured to use
channel 2 with 100% of its maximum current. If the format of the command is correct and the fields have appropriate
values, then the simulator will respond with “LED Configured”.
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L,7,3,80
LED Configured
L,1,2,100
LED Configured
Note that once configured a virtual LED can be modified simply by rewriting its definition. Defining the same
virtual LED number multiple times does not produce an error but only the last definition will be saved.
The DL (Dump LEDs) command will list all of the virtual LEDs that have been configured in the simulator.
There are no additional fields for this command. Note that each virtual LED is listed using the same format as the
command used to configure it, except that the first letter is a lower-case ‘l’.
DL
Saved LEDs
l,1,2,100
l,7,3,80
The XL (eXecute LED) command can be used to manually turn an LED on or off. This command has two
fields: the virtual LED number and the desired brightness level. The brightness level must be from 0 to 100, and is a
percentage of the maximum LED current. The commands shown below will turn on virtual LED #1 at 100% of its
possible brightness, and then turn it off.
XL,1,100
Executing LED 1
XL,1,0
Executing LED 1
Flashes
Patterns
Random Pattern Sets
Using the Keypad
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