The Application Console

While running, SDC provides console access where you can issue certain commmands to interrogate the system and set certain configurations. Access to the console is via a standardised protocol called ‘telnet’. This is a simple text based protocol where commands can be issued and the results reported back.

The console can only be accessed if you have a WIFI connection (or a hard wired network connection but that is unlikely in a vehicle, right?). If this is all too technical for you, don’t worry about it. You only need it in certain circumstances and can definitely manage without it.

My go-to telnet application is ‘putty’ - it is free and it works well.

Starting with version 1.31 of SDC tools, you do not need to enter any values into the putty dialog - the console will open automatically if you double click the IP address in the list of SDC instances on the SDC tools main page. So all you need to do is install Putty.

To get connected to the SDC installation:

• Install putty
• Start SDC Tools and make sure your SDC instance is running and connected to the same WiFi network as the PC you are running the tools on.
• Double click the IP address listed in SDC Tools. If you are running multiple instances you will see more than one IP address, so be sure to click the one you want to connect to.
• A putty window will appear with a command prompt for you to enter commands . You should see some text confirming that you are connected to the SDC Telnet Console.

You can type ‘help’ to see a list of commands.