Get Up and Running Quickly!
The CTI-HSIF Software Library provides a "plug-and-play" software interface to the Acuity Research AR4000 laser distance sensor and ISA or PO104 High-Speed Interface Card, so you can concentrate on your application functionality, rather than on hardware interfacing or data collection details.
Note: Users of the PCI High-Speed Interface Card should use the CTI-HSIF-PCI Library instead.

Rapid Prototyping!
Install the software, then use Excel to acquire and analyze sensor data immediately. No programming required!

Your Choice of Languages!
Develop in C, C++ or [on Windows] Visual Basic or Visual Basic for Applications. The same features are supported by all languages - you make the choice!

Windows or Linux!
Available for Windows 2000 and XP and for Linux. You pick the system that suits you best.

Easy to Use!
The numerous sample programs, the simple, intuitive, english-like application programming interface (API), supported by the extensive Programmers's Guide permits the rapid development of applications to acquire sensor data without being concerned with the complexities of serial communications, interrupt handling, or hardware interfacing issues.

On all systems the library provides full support for:

  • Handling of the card's 'buffer half-full' interrupt.
  • Motor power and direction control.
  • Encoder index pulse and counter wrap-around handling.
All models of the AR4000 sensor family, and the full AR4000 command set, are supported.

The Visual Basic® code sample below illustrates how only a few lines of code are required to acquire and display range data from the sensor (error handling omitted for clarity). 

  Dim rc As Long, numRead as Long, i as Long
  Dim samples(1000) As Double

  Dim mySensor As CTI_HSIF      'Declare an HSIF sensor variable

  Set mySensor = New CTI_HSIF	'Create new instance of the HSIF sensor class

  mySensor.setCommOpen("com1:", 9600)  'Set serial port and baud rate

  mySensor.setSamplesPerSec(150) 'Set 150 samples per second

  mySensor.setMotorPower(32)     'Set motor power

  mySensor.setLaserOn()          'Turn on the laser

  numRead = mySensor.getHSIFSamples(samples, 100)  'Read 100 range samples
  For i = 1 To numRead
    MsgBox "Sample" + Str(i) + " = " + Str(samples(i)), vbInformation
  Next i

Numerous other code samples are available in our Code Sample library.

For further information, please consult the FAQ list, or the library's datasheet.

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Programmer's Guide
The complete Programmer's Guide and Reference Manual may be downloaded here (PDF 600 KB)


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