Help a newbie communicate with HyperTerminal

[webbr]

Hey,

So I am attempting to use the ioBridge on a water quality project. This is my first time attempting a project like this, and I am running into some problems. Hopefully someone here will be able to help.

The water quality device that has an RS232 input and you can communicate with the device by using basic SDI-12 commands. Basically before trying to interface the ioBridge with the device and dealing with a host of other issues, I wanted to get the serial communication part down. To do this I connected my ioBridge serial board to a USB serial cable (http://www.buzzillions.com/dz_1166503_gigaware_6_ft._usb_a_serial_cable_reviews).

I cut the RS232 end of the USB serial cable off and connected the TX and RX wires to the TX and RX inputs on the serial smart board.

After that I opened up my computer and tried to send commands from a widget to HyperTerminal. I matched up all of the settings and turned the ioBridge channel onto serial, but I wasn’t able to see anything at all on HyperTerminal. I was wondering if anyone had any idea what might be going wrong, or if there is a simpler test I could be doing.

Thanks

[jason]

Have you successfully transferred any data through your USB/Serial adapter to hyper-terminal (without ioBridge)?  If so then you can eliminate that as a potential source of the problem.   

[webbr]

Hey,

So I can now read strings over ioBridge that I type into HyperTerminal, but I can't seem to get anything I type in the Send Serial Message Widget to show in HyperTerminal. Any advice for fixing this problem or where to start debugging?

[jason]

There are two types of serial send widgets.  One is used for sending serial data out the digital output pin directly.  The other is used with the Serial Smart Board.  Can you double check to make sure you have made the correct type of widget?

[webbr]

I have channel 1 of my ioBridge in serial mode, and I am using the  send serial message (variable) widget. I have noticed that when I send a string through the widget characters show on the Modules page where it monitors the serial data.

Is it sending the strings there instead of HyperTerminal?

[jason]

Serial data should only appear on the module configuration page if it is being received through the serial board  (through the RX pin).   If you seeing data which you send through a serial widget appear on the module page then either some wires are shorted out (the TX line is touching the RX line) or some kind of local echo setting has been enabled on hyperterminal.  However, the local echo setting of hyperterminal usually only affects data transmitted, not received.