Tecan Gemini Test with Aladdin Hardlock Dongle
What is Tecan Gemini
The Gemini software controls the Tecan robotics in legacy environments. In Perl Robotics environment, the Robotics modules use this module to send (pipe) hardware commands through Gemini software to the physical hardware.
- Tecan has a separate software interface, EVOware, which is to be implemented as a separate perl module in the future (contact author).
- This module is only useful in the framework of other Robotics modules. It probably should not be used on it’s own.
- This module may include (in the future) mechanisms for parsing Gemini data files (*.gem or *.gwl files).
- Since this will occur under Win32, and there is no mechanism for forking, this call will likely never return. Best not to call this method if the Tecan application is already running: unexpected Win32 results may occur.
This method should only be used when “Desktop” access to start the Tecan application is unavailable (such as starting the service from a remote machine over the network).
Usage, for Tecan: Do query() first, to see if the robotics is “not started”; if it is not, use this function to start Gemini, then query() again (the second time should find the named pipe).
Software robots have great potential to do repetitive, predictable tasks. Robotic process automation can imitate many work-related employee behaviors. This is for businesses; This means reduced transaction costs, improved quality and consistency of processes, and perhaps most importantly, supporting business scaling.
SYNOPSIS
Provides local communication to robotics hardware devices, related peripherals, or network communication to these devices. Also provides a high-level, object oriented software interface to abstract the low level robotics commands or low level robotics hardware. Environmental configuration is provided with a configuration file in YAML format. Allows other hardware device drivers to be plugged into this module.
Simple examples are provided in the examples/ directory of the distribution.
Nomenclature note: The name “Robotics” is used in full, rather than “Robot”, to distinguish mechanical robots from the many internet-spidering software modules or software user agents commonly (and erroneously) referred to as “robots”. Robotics has motors; both the internet & software do not!
