Serial In Widget - No Serial Board

[ohararp]

Gents, I am working on a couple of projects where it would be super handy to not have the serial board.  Any chance this could be a feature in the next firmware update.  Even something as simple as a 16 Byte maximum would be handy!

[jason]

I'm almost 100% sure that feature will never be added.  It's mostly because of technical reasons.  The IO-204 can't listen for serial data on an input pin and do everything else it needs, like manage the network connection, simultaneously.       

[ohararp]

Jason, that is fine.  I will plan appropriately.  With that said, is there anyway we can get future serial boards to have a similar pinout convention as the iobridge module.  The convention as it stands is not very helpful for cross compatibility of interface boards.  I am not sure why you changed things up for the serial board, but changing the pinouts to the convention below would keep things in line better.

Current (IObridge 204 vs Serial Board)
AI   vs  5V
DI   vs  TX
DO  vs  RX
GND vs  RTS
5V   vs GND

Suggest:
AI   vs  RTS
DI   vs  RX
DO  vs  TX
GND vs  GND
5V   vs  5V

[jason]

It's just coincidence that a I/O channel connector is the same as a serial board output connector.  If we would have put a DB-9 on the serial board, the question wouldn't even come up.
 
The pinout is set that way on the serial board to match the row of pins on a DB-9 serial port pinout.

   DB-9          SB-5
1   DCD   ->     --
2   RX     ->     TX
3   TX     ->     RX
4   DTR   ->     RTS
5   GND   ->     GND

[ohararp]

Jason, that would make more sense if you were to include a MAX232 or similar chip to get the required voltages that would be necessary on a DB9 type of connection.  Since we are running a TTL voltages it makes more sense to share compatibility with the IO204 module pinout. 

Either way its a matter of semantics.  I can design separate boards for connection to either ithe io204 module or the serial smart board.  It would just be nice if they were pin compatible.