TES Controller Serial Command Reference

This document describes every serial command exposed by the TES Controller firmware found in TES_Controller/TES_Controller.ino. Use it as the definitive reference when interacting with the board over a USB serial connection or when building higher-level host tooling.

• Port settings: 115200 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, no flow control (115200 8N1).
• Line endings: Commands are terminated with a newline (\n) or carriage return + newline (\r\n). The command parser is case-insensitive for the top-level tokens (LNA, TES, DAC, HELP) but subcommand keywords should be supplied exactly as shown below.
• Channel numbering: Firmware expects one-based channel indices.
  • TES channels: 1 – 12
  • LNA channels: 1 – 2
• Targets: Whenever a command requires a LNA target path, use literal GATE or DRAIN.

Every command returns a YAML packet terminated by a blank line. Successful operations use:

---
status: ok
result:
  command: <NAME>
  ... additional key/value data ...

Failures (invalid parameters, I²C errors, etc.) use:

---
status: error
result:
  error: "<SYMBOLIC_ERROR>"
  code: <numeric_status>
  message: "<human readable context>"

Keys and numeric ranges mentioned below mirror the firmware exactly.

The sections below expand each subcommand, including argument ranges and the keys returned in result.

HELP

Prints a tree of all commands and their brief descriptions. No YAML payload is returned; the output is plain text generated by the StaticSerialCommands library.

Top-level syntax: DAC <SUBCOMMAND> [...]

Top-level syntax: LNA <channel> <GATE|DRAIN> <SUBCOMMAND> [...]

• channel: integral, 1 – 2
• target: literal GATE or DRAIN

Errors during any LNA operation return an error symbol such as "LNA_SET_ERROR", "LNA_BUS_READ_ERROR", etc., along with the low-level I²C status code (code).

Top-level syntax: TES <channel> <SUBCOMMAND> [...]

• channel: integral, 1 – 12

All TES error responses follow the same structure with symbols like "TES_SET_CURRENT_ERROR", "TES_TCA_READ_ERROR", etc.

• Search-based setters: LNA SETMA, LNA SETV, and TES SET perform iterative searches using the underlying driver convenience routines. The returned current_mA, voltage_V, or tca_bits represent the post-search state actually achieved.
• Raw DAC writes: SETDAC, SETINT, and SETHEX bypass any search logic and immediately write the specified code. Take care not to exceed the valid ranges—values outside the ranges listed above are rejected with status: error.
• Telemetry units:
  • Shunt voltages are reported in millivolts (mV).
  • Bus voltages are reported in volts (V).
  • Currents are reported in milliamps (mA).
  • Powers are reported in milliwatts (mW).
• Error codes: The numeric code field in an error response comes directly from the driver status return (typically an I²C error byte). A non-zero code indicates the call did not reach the requested hardware state.

With this reference you can script direct interactions with the firmware, build custom tooling, or simply verify that higher-level software layers send the expected traffic.