Week of December 17th

Relatively inexpensive serial to relay board was found on the Internet.

http://www.pencomdesign.com/8ch_relay.htm

The board should be used on one end of the vehicle only.

One of these should be used:

Eight Channel Relay w/enclosure with adapter & 7' cable	Model # S8-RLY-EXT-S	Price: $109.80
Eight Channel Relay no/enclosure with adapter & 7' cable	Model # S8-RLY-INT-S	Price: $88.20

Highlights from the manufacturer:

	ASCII commands to control relays.
	Easy hook up using standard Modular telephone cable, for connecting PC to single board and for multiple board configurations (9-pin serial to modular cable adapter required available separately).
	Any software language that can write to the PC serial port can be used with this relay board NO special drivers needed.
	9600 baud

Command-line Format

The following structure will turn ON relay number 1 on board addressed as "A" using COM2:

CLS.exe /@COM2 /AH1

Note: the path to the program are not shown in these examples.

The following structure will turn OFF relay number 3 on board addressed as "B" using COM1:

CLS.exe /BL3

Note: the /@COM command is not required for COM1

A space is required between "CLS.exe" and "/@COM2" or between "CLS.exe" and "/AH1" if using COM1, spaces are not required between /@COM2 and /AH1

The following structure using one command will turn OFF relays 1 to 4 and turn ON relays 5 to 8 on a 8 Channel board addressed as "C" using COM1:

CLS.exe /CW240

If the relay board is connected to COM1 the /@COM2 command can be eliminated since the software defaults to COM1. Valid COM commands are from /@COM1 to /@COM16. The slash "/" and at sign "@" are required in the command string.

Only one COM command and one board command are allowed on the line at a time with the COM command first.

The software will only accept the codes required to operate our serial relay boards.

If an incorrect command is entered, the software will display the error and open the program window instead of completing the command in the background.

Future software enhancements may allow multiple commands.