Is it possible to configure the ‘jrk 12v12’ from Linux? I don’t need a GUI application. A command-line utility would suffice for my needs; even just documentation of the serial protocol would be helpful. I could then just write a little script to configure the device. Is there any advanced documentation for this device?
The Maestro Servo controller came with both Windows and Linux versions of the configuration tool. It was disappointing that the ‘jrk 12v12’ was missing this.
Thank you,
Noah Spurrier
Hello, Noah.
We don’t distribute precompiled Jrk software for Linux, but you can download the Pololu USB SDK and compile JrkCmd, a command-line utility (written in C#) for configuring and controlling the jrk. You can use JrkCmd to configure the jrk from a configuration file (which you can get from either JrkCmd or the Jrk Configuration Utility).
The complete documentation of the jrk’s serial protocol is in the user’s guide, but the permanent configuration settings of the jrk can only be changed over USB using control transfers. For more information on what control transfers the jrk supports and what the protocol is for them, you can see the source code of the Jrk class in the Pololu USB SDK; that source code could be considered advanced documentation for the jrk. However, if all you want to do is configure the jrk from the command line, you won’t need to look at the source code because JrkCmd supports that already.
As for Mac OS: we haven’t tried compiling any of the jrk software for Mac OS and can’t really support it, but you might be able to get it to work because both mono and libusb work on the Mac.
–David
