Docklight News

UPDATE 2025/09 - It seems that contrary to Microsoft's roadmap announcement some Windows 11 24H2 new installations come with the VBSCRIPT Windows Feature disabled by default. Please see our related Windows 11 24H2 troubleshooting info for more details and instructions to fix this.  Original news item from 2025/01, with updated release plan for Docklight V2.5:  As we have stepped into 2025, it's a good time to discuss our ideas for the future of Docklight and Docklight Scripting.  Docklight and Docklight Scripting have always been developed and maintained with an "it just runs" focus, carefully maintaining full compatibility and avoiding any breakage with any new release. At the same time, the software world continues to evolve or is even revolutionized by AI tools, and a newly designed Docklight today would certainly look different from our existing Windows offerings.  So let's provide some answers to some obvious questions. (And, no, I didn't ask ChatGPT to ...

Docklight / Docklight Scripting V2.4 available We are pleased to announce our Docklight V2.4 and Docklight Scripting V2.4 updates. Here are the direct download links: Docklight Scripting V2.4 - Download Docklight V2.4 - Download As usual, this is a free update and part of our  lifetime license commitment that makes Docklight such a great one-time investment. The V2.4 updates address minor issues that our users and we noticed in the daily work with the V2.3 releases from 2020. The full changelog looks like this: Docklight / Docklight Scripting V2.4.5 (04/2022) Fixes and Improvements: - New Expert Option: Devices -> "Disable I/O error detection / hotplug feature for COM." Hotplug / auto-recovery was added in Docklight V2.3, but could produce I/O error events with some specific drivers even in normal operation. V2.4 has improvements, plus you can always disable hotplug completely (back to V2.2 behavior). - Improved COM port RX timing for devices using Microsoft's st...

Docklight V2.3 adds project doc support UPDATE 2020/01 - standard V2.3 release out now. Here are the download links for our V2.3 release versions : Download Docklight V2.3 Release Version Download Docklight Scripting V2.3 Release Version New  features include: Sequence and project documentation area RTF logging new Scripting commands for creating custom tools: DL.SetUserOutput / DL.SetWindowLayout / DL.GetKeyState Docklight makes device testing easier for your clients Quickly building small demo applications for clients is a task where Docklight really shines. It is a major reason for Docklight’s popularity among equipment manufacturers or integrators using RS232/RS485/TCP/UDP/HID-based communication interfaces. With Docklight or Docklight Scripting you can swiftly create an example project that shows typical protocol commands and the device responses in action. So along with the device manual and application protocol description, the customer gets a hands-on e...

Just before going into summer holiday mode, we released free maintenance updates for Docklight and Docklight Scripting . Here is what we improved before the outdoors became too tempting... A lot of attention went into flawless Windows 10 compatibility, especially when accessing  USB HID Custom Class devices or COM device drivers with input data buffer > 4KB. In addition, a Docklight script (.pts file) can now be loaded and started automatically along with the Docklight project (.ptp file). If your project is called "robotest.ptp", simply name your script file "robotest_auto.pts" and make sure it is located in the same folder. This is especially useful for any script that with event-based processing using Sub On_Send() or Sub On_Receive() . The Docklight main screen underwent some fine-tuning. Finally there is mouse wheel support for the Send Sequence and Receive Sequence lists. Send and Receive Sequence lists are now protected against accidental reord...

The free updates to Docklight and Docklight Scripting are out now. You can download the updated software from here: Docklight runs smoothly on the fresh Windows 10 Download Docklight V2.1 and Docklight Scripting V2.1 It has taken us quite a while to come up with the final features, and here's why: We actually spend a lot of time working with Docklight, not on  Docklight. Docklight & Kickdrive powered Touch Panel UI New functions that go into Docklight are either things our users needed to solve a specific problem. Or we needed it ourselves, to build some interesting applications for equipment control & configuration. The pretty touch panel to the left was made using a  Docklight DLL  inside a  Kickdrive Runtime Application . It talks to a Technosoft controller using a custom serial protocol including a checksum. So in Docklight and Docklight Scripting V2.1 you can benefit from a very accessible checksum/CRC calculator...