Hi, I just learned about the existence of serial port servers, and I think that this will be a great thing for a project I’m working on. I have a bunch of devices with serial interfaces on them and I want to tie them all together with some software I’m writing. I’m assuming that the serial port server looks just like a computer to the external device, so there should be nothing on that end that I need to do. On the computer, does the serial port server look like an additional serial port, or do I talk to it via sockets? On linux, can I just open the proper /dev/tty and talk to the serial port automatically? And what about under cygwin on windows, does the serial port show up at under the proper /dev/tty?
Can I have one computer talk to multiple serial port servers, and is it possible to have multiple computers talk to the same serial port server?
Sorry if these are silly questions, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for in the documentation online, and since this is pretty new to me, I didn’t know where to search.
Here are some answers for you:
On the computer, does the serial port server look like an additional serial port, or do I talk to it via sockets?
A: Either. The Realport driver is a comm port emulator that will create comm/tty serial devices on the server where Realport is installed. For OS compatability, please refer to this link for the list of operating systems:
http://www.digi.com/support/productdetl.jsp?pid=3037&osvid=0&s=261&tp=1
You can also talk to the serial ports by using them in TCP Server mode (sockets method)
On linux, can I just open the proper /dev/tty and talk to the serial port automatically? And what about under cygwin on windows, does the serial port show up at under the proper /dev/tty?
On a Linux server where Realport is installed, a number of tty devices will appear in /dev. One a Windows server where Realport is installed, comm ports are created which can be found in Device Manager.
Can I have one computer talk to multiple serial port servers, and is it possible to have multiple computers talk to the same serial port server?
Yes to the first question. As far as the second question, yes, but not natively (i.e. you’d have to enable “port sharing” on the Portserver TS unit where you want this to occur. By default, port sharing is not enabled.