ZapTools - interfacing SeqZap

The way SeqZap interfaces to the world is through some special kind of plugins called ZapTools. SeqZap comes with a line of ready-to-use extendable standard ZapTools. The whole idea with ZapTools (and the other plugin types) is to be able to extend the functionality of SeqZap without having to change SeqZap itself.

The current list of standard ZapTools includes:

Audio Tool (uses standard and ASIO audio devices to play and record audio)
Command Line (for executing standard Windows console commands)
DigitalIO Tool (for simple digital IO)
E-mail sender (for testing e-mail functionality and for sending mail notification when testexecution ends or needs attention)
File Transfer (sending and receiving files via any stream using e.g. x-modem. Any protocol can be added as a separate plug-in.)
Graphical Tool (working with graphical bitmaps to e.g. inspect display dump from a device)
MIDI Tool (send and receive MIDI-messages and streaming via plugins in SysEx-messages)
ModBus
Oscilloscope Tool (still a prototype)
SampleArray Tool (used by Audio Tool, Oscilloscope Tool and some custom tools to measure, generate and analyze multi-channel sample-data)
Selenium Tool (automating web interfaces)
Streams (RS232, TCP, MIDI, Telnet and more)
Test Interface (for accessing a device's or application's textual command interface)
TimerCounter Tool (controlling hardware timer/counters for counting and frequency-/pulse-generation)
Windows Input (control mouse and keyboard on local machine)
XYDisplay and XYTerminal (for text-based displays and terminals)

A lot of other tools are in our pipeline, and we make them in a prioritized order making those requested by our customers first.

Creating custom ZapTools

Custom ZapTools and ZapTool extensions can easily be created by the user or by Sequanto. All it requires is a C# editor like the free Visual Studio Express IDE from Microsoft®. Many kinds of custom ZapTools can be based on a standard ZapTool to benefit from all the standard methods and interactive panels that are continuously maintained, improved and extended by Sequanto.

Extendability - extending existing ZapTools

The interface and framework for developing ZapTools makes all ZapTools extendable. Therefore all standard tools and specific tools can be extended by creating a ZapTool Extension Plugin. An extension can add new methods, properties and panels to another ZapTool.
When a ZapTool is extended no scripts needs to be changed at all.
Even when the extended functionality is needed in a script it is not necessary to use another ZapTool (e.g. MyZapToolExtended). The ZapTool just appears to have more methods and properties than before.