Licensing

This SDK is a commercial product. You have 30 days to test it for free, with every feature available. After that a license key is needed.

Trial period

The trial starts the first time the library is used on a machine, and lasts 30 days. Nothing has to be registered, and no feature is disabled during that time.

AbbController.LicenseInfo tells you where you stand. EvaluationDaysLeft counts the days remaining, and becomes negative once the trial has expired.

Register a license

Buy a license (see pricing) and we send you a license key with the name of your organization. Pass both to the static method RegisterLicense of AbbController, once, before the first connection.

static void Main()
{
// Register the license once, before the first connection
AbbController.RegisterLicense("YourCompanyName", "YOUR_LICENSE_KEY");

LicenseInfo info = AbbController.LicenseInfo;

// Number of trial days remaining, null when the product is licensed
int? evaluationDaysLeft = info.EvaluationDaysLeft;

bool licenseValid = info.State == LicenseState.Licensed;

// A readable description of the current state
Console.WriteLine(info);


// Check the license once at startup, rather than catching the exception
// on every connection
if (!AbbController.LicenseInfo.IsLicensed)
{
    Console.WriteLine(AbbController.LicenseInfo);
    return;
}


// Without a key the library runs in its 30 day trial period.
// Connect throws an InvalidLicenseException once the trial has expired.
try
{
    AbbController robot = new AbbController();
    robot.Connect("192.168.0.1");
}
catch (InvalidLicenseException ex)
{
    Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
    Console.WriteLine(ex.LicenseInfo.State);
}
}
}

The registration is static: it applies to the whole application, not to one AbbController instance. You can register a key even after the trial period has ended.

AbbController.LicenseInfo returns the current state at any moment. Its ToString() gives a readable description, which is what an InvalidLicenseException carries as its message.

License states

IsLicensed is true for Licensed, Trial and ExtraTrial.

A license includes a number of maintenance years. MaintenanceExpirationDate is the date up to which a release can be used with that key. Versions released after that date report MaintenanceNeeded. The versions you already use keep working, a new key is only needed to move to a newer release.

What happens without a valid license

AbbController.Connect checks the license before opening the connection and throws an InvalidLicenseException when it is not valid. The exception message says why, and its LicenseInfo property carries the full state.

Test IsLicensed at startup rather than catching the exception on every connection, as the code above does.

Try it in the demo application

Everything on this page can be tried without writing code, in the License page of the demo application.

The demo application is open source. The C# source of this page is LicenseControl.cs.

API reference