Note: This article was updated August 2, 2022 to reflect a re-organization of Cyclone features.
PEmicro has released a powerful new set of automated control software, the Cyclone Control Suite, to support PC based control of our popular Cyclone LC and Cyclone FX stand-alone programmers.
The suite provides comprehensive control of one or more Cyclones from the PC via the following components: the Cyclone Control GUI application, the Cyclone Control Console application, and via custom PC applications built using the Cyclone Control SDK. Ways to control the Cyclone include programming launch, recovering results, managing images resident on a Cyclone, adding unique programming data for each target, as well as recovering descriptive errors.
The Cyclone installation software includes the Cyclone Control Suite. Simply install the software and use the capabilities of the Cyclone Control Suite with any Cyclone unit, regardless of model or purchase date.
Almost all of the Cyclone Control feature set works for all Cyclones. The Cyclone FX offers an advanced feature, Run Test, which is not available on the Cyclone LC. A more complete description is below.
Components
The Cyclone Control Suite consists of three major components:
 | Cyclone Control GUI – This is an interactive GUI based application which provides an easy way to control Cyclones and manage images resident in the Cyclones. Given its graphical nature, it is very easy to explore Cyclone Control Suite capabilities to intuitively control or interact with a Cyclone. |
 | Cyclone Control Console – This is a powerful command-line application that can be launched from a script, a command-line, or another application and allows control of one or more Cyclones simultaneously. The command-line application displays comprehensive status messages and also returns an error code which can be recovered by the calling application. |
 | Cyclone Control SDK – This is a Software Development Kit with a comprehensive API allowing multiple Cyclones to be managed simultaneously from a user developed custom application that loads the provided Cyclone Control DLL. The DLL can be loaded from many programming languages that are able to load a DLL (C, C++, Java, Python, Delphi, C#, etc) as well as environments such as LabView. Examples and interface code are provided in C (MSVC and GCC), LabVIEW, C#, Python, Visual Basic, and Delphi/FPC. Support for both 32-bit and 64-bit is available. |
The Console and GUI were both built with the SDK and are good examples of the types of applications which can be built using the SDK.
Features
The Cyclone Control Suite is included with the Cyclone LC and Cyclone FX programmers and provides many standard features including the ability to:
- Control a Cyclone via USB, Serial, or Ethernet connections
- Select and Launch Images by Name or Enumeration
- Recover programming result and descriptive error information
- Use automatically counting local (Cyclone stored) serial numbers
- Add/Remove/Update multiple images in the Cyclone (Console, SDK, GUI)
- Simultaneously (Gang) Control multiple Cyclones via the
- Program (and Read) Dynamic Data in addition to fixed image data
- Remote Display Access
- Read/write Cyclone properties
- Read Image and target Properties and Status
The CYCLONE FX includes an exclusive advanced automation feature:
Limited To Touchscreen Cyclone Models
Advanced automation features in the Cyclone Control Suite are not available for non-touchscreen cyclone models (Cyclone Max, Cyclone Pro, Cyclone ST, and Cyclone Renesas). Please use the Classic Cyclone Automated Control Package when using advanced features with these Cyclones.
