System Requirements & Installation

The DHD Communication Server is installed automatically when starting a DHD application for the first time. This software (e.g., Toolbox8) extracts the program file of the DHDCS and saves it to the hard disk of your PC. To make this work, your current Windows user account must have the permission to write in the directory containing the DHD application! If this is the case, the DHDCS file is created in this directory.

If the user has no write permission in this directory, the program file for the DHDCS is created in the users temporary directory.

Therefore, sort out the writing permissions of your Windows user account carefully with your system administrator. Otherwise, problems can occur when installing, updating and operating DHD applications. We recommend to start a DHD application for the first time with administrator permissions! But you also have to make sure that the directory for the DHDCS has write access for normal users.

In order to make the DHDCS work correctly for all DHD applications, some entries have to be written into the Windows Registry. If your user account is not authorized to do that, the DHDCS can not be started! In both cases, an error message will be shown.

In these cases, you can use the running DHD application, but a connection to DSP cores is impossible.

You do not need to install the DHD Communication Server manually. This software is included in every DHD application and installs itself. It works like this:

When starting a DHD application, the application looks for a DHDCS program file already available on the PC. If there is no such file or only an older version, the DHD application extracts the up-to-date DHDCS program and copies it in its own file on the hard disk. Thus, any existing older DHDCS program file will be replaced. Problems can only occur if your Windows account does not have the required writing permissions or if a version of the DHDCS is already running. (Please find more detailed information in the following section.)

The DHDCS starts up as follows:

1. The DHD application compares the version of the integrated DHDCS with the ones available on the system.
2. If the version on the system is up-to-date, it is started.
3. If the integrated version is more up-to-date, it is extracted and replaces the version registered on the system. Then, the new version is started.

If the DHDCS update was successful, the following message is shown:

Notification about a successful DHDCS update.

Like all other DHD applications, also the DHD Communication Server is under constant development. Updates of DHD applications often require updates of the DHDCS shipped with the application. This means that the program file of recent DHD application also contains an updated DHDCS version.

If you want to know which DHDCS version is active on your PC, follow these steps:

1. Start any one of the DHD applications, for example Toolbox5. You can identify an active DHDCS when the small orange DHD icon is shown in the notification area of the Windows Taskbar.
2. Double click the DHDCS icon. The DHDCS application window opens.
3. On the ? menu, click About. The Information window opens.
4. In the Info area you see the version and the date of creation of the DHDCS. Always quote this information if you have questions to the DHD support.

The Information window of the DHD Communication Server.

Error message if a DHD Communication Server is already running and can not be updated.

Though the DHD application starts after clicking OK in the error message, but it can not set up a connection to the DHD devices in the network.

All versions of the DHD Communication Server are programmed in a way that also older versions of DHD applications work with the new DHDCS. Therefore, you can use older versions of DHD applications even if a newer version of the DHDCS is installed on your PC.