WinWedge Standard is designed to work with simple devices such as bar code readers, electronic scales, calipers and gauges, or any other device that transmits simple text data, either single field data or comma delimited data.

WinWedge Standard has two modes for passing incoming serial data directly to other programs: a "Keystroke Mode", where incoming data is passed to other programs as keystrokes, and a "DDE Server Mode" that passes data to other programs using Dynamic Data Exchange. The DDE capabilities allow you to do things like write simple macros in Excel that perform fully bi-directional serial I/O functions.

The Standard edition has basic parsing and filtering capabilities for dealing with either fixed length or delimited data records. It also has hot keys that you can define for sending prompts via a serial port to a device, as well as a full character translation table for translating individual characters to either specific keystrokes or to other characters.

Additional feature list

• Supports all COM ports 1-9. Install on up to nine serial ports on a PC for data collection from many devices simultaneously.

• Data Transfer as Keystrokes directly into any other application program.

• Data Transfer by DDE to any Windows application. Includes an advanced set of DDE commands that allow other Windows applications to take complete control of all Wedge functions, including serial output functions. The DDE command set allows you to create extremely powerful device control interfaces from within any other program that supports DDE, e.g. Excel, Access, etc.

• Basic Data Parsing Capabilities allow you to split incoming data into fields. Input only data you need and ignore the rest.

• A Powerful Serial Data Analyzer feature allows you to preview serial data and debug all serial communications problems.

• Data Filtering Capabilities let you selectively filter out non-numeric characters from any field in your input data or ignore specific fields altogether. The Pro versions have additional filtering options.

• Pre-Transfer Translation Tables. Translate incoming ASCII characters to other characters to specific PC keystrokes.

• Keystroke Macro Insertion. Add additional keystrokes or keystroke macros before, after, or within your serial input data. Keystroke macros allow you to control where and how serial data appears in the target application program in Keystroke Mode.

• Automatic Date and Time Stamping. Place date and time stamps directly in your serial input data.

• Up To 20 Button Controlled Output Strings. Program buttons to either send data strings out the serial port or lower the PC's DTR line whenever the button is clicked. Use the Output Buttons to send prompt strings, or other control data, to your serial devices.

• Automatic Data Acknowledgment feature sends a string back to the serial device after each data record has been received.

• Timed Automatic Prompting. Have the Wedge automatically transmit prompt strings or commands at regular timed intervals.

• Fully Selectable Communications Parameters. 110-19,200 baud; 5,6,7 or 8 data bits; 1 or 2 stop bits; EVEN, ODD, MARK, SPACE or NO parity.

• Hardware and Software Flow Control.Selectable input and output buffer sizes from 128 bytes to 32K. Support for new high speed 16550 UARTs and all available IRQs.

WinWedge Pro is a highly advanced set of applications that all work together to get data from practically any type of data source (RS232, TCP/IP or Disk File Data) directly into any application program running on a standalone PC or across any TCP/IP network, including the Internet.

The Professional Edition of WinWedge adds a number of advanced capabilities to the Standard Edition including a "Log to Disk Mode" that allows you to use WinWedge Pro as an advanced serial data logger. It also has a more advanced data parser that allows you to parse, filter and format more complex data from more sophisticated devices. Some of the advanced features of the parser are the ability to work with raw binary or hex data, the ability to apply math expressions to individual data fields in a stream of data for the purpose of scaling the data or converting units (i.e. convert inches to millimetres, grams to ounces, etc.) You can also define format expressions in WinWedge Pro that allow you to do things like force a specific number of decimal places in numeric values or force data to contain an exact number or sequence of characters.

The professional Edition also has the ability to send or receive RS232 serial data across a TCP/IP network using two additional programs called TCP-Wedge and TCP/Com. TCP/Com is designed to expose an RS232 serial port to a TCP/IP port on a network and TCP-Wedge is designed to do the same job as WinWedge Pro except that it inputs data from a TCP/IP port instead of an RS232 serial port. With TCP/Com and TCP-Wedge, you could do things like connect an RS232 serial device to the serial port on one PC and then use TCP-Wedge to input data from that serial device directly into a program running on another PC somewhere in either the same network or across the Internet. For example, you could have a GPS receiver or a scale sending data into the serial port on a PC in New Zealand and then input the data from the device across the Internet directly into a spreadsheet running on a PC in Canada.

In addition to the above, WinWedge Pro also comes with a program called File-Wedge that does the same thing as WinWedge and TCP-Wedge except that it inputs data from a disk file. For example, you could use File-Wedge to read data from a disk file and then feed that data directly into a database application as keystrokes or using DDE. You can think of File-Wedge as a shoe horn for getting data that exists in a disk file into some other program where you would normally have to type the data in, without having to actually type anything. File-Wedge would do all the typing for you.

Advanced features in WinWedge Pro 3.1.41

• Over 30% faster than 16 bit versions.

• As a true 32 bit application it fully supports all 32 bit features such as pre-emptive multitasking and long file names.

• Extended support for 2-way I/O to give you more options for controlling serial devices.

• Supports up to 99 com ports simultaneously.

• Support for any serial data including Binary, Hexadecimal and Octal as well as ASCII.

• Maximum field lengths up to 64K (vs. 256 bytes in WinWedge).

• 30 powerful math and string functions including scaling, conversions, arithmetic and logical operators.

• Sophisticated data parsing, filtering and formatting of any type or structure of data even very sophisticated data.

• Virtual Instrument Mode to simulate data from any device.

• Support for up to 56,000 baud communications (WinWedge Standard only supports up to 19,200 baud).

• Hot Key activated output strings and Hot Key control of all WinWedge Pro features.

• A Pre-Input Character Translation table that can be used to simplify complex input data record structures.

• More advanced data filtering options.

• Expanded DDE support provides more precise control over serial I/O functions directly from within other Windows applications.

• An optional Disk File Logging mode for serial data. Use it to log serial data to a file in the background.

• File-Wedge easily inputs data from any disk file directly into any Windows application. Works just like WinWedge except data is read from a disk file instead of a serial port.

• TCP-Wedge communicates with any TCP/IP network port address directly from within any Windows application - Access, Excel, etc. Send and collect data over the Internet or Ethernet from within your Windows application programs.

• TCP/Com converts any existing RS-232 Serial Port into a TCP/IP Port.

• TCP-File logs data from any number of TCP/IP sources to disk.

• Com-File logs data from up to 16 serial ports simultaneously.