USB to RS-232 Serial Adapter Advice

On Feb 23, 2:36*pm, DRN wrote:
On Feb 23, 2:07*pm, jcarlyle wrote:

I stand corrected! What I was trying to do was to try and prevent
someone not as well versed as you to buy a USB serial adapter, plug it
into Windows running as the sole OS, and then wonder why his DOS
program wouldn't talk to his SN10. Naturally, there are many ways to
skin a cat - especially if you are a computer expert.

-John

Warning, further confusion posted above...
* ILEC SN10 software includes versions for 32-bit Windows
* AND 16-bit Windows/DOS.
* DOS versions of SN10 and many other programs run great
* under "simulated" DOS, including:
* - DOSbox (runs your ILEC software on a Mac with no Windows)
* - PC emulators that run on PDAs (as above)
* - etc.

For PCs, we recommend Belkin USB-to-serial adapters, as
Belkin drivers have fewer bugs, exist for 64-bit windows, etc.
Many adapters will only function correctly at certain settings,
which *might* be what you need - or not.

For Mac, we recommend Keyspan.

Many adapters have drivers for only one OS (ie, Windows
or Mac), so you have to be a bit careful !

Hope this helps,
Best Regards, Dave "YO electric"

Ooops, forgot this link:
http://www.nadler.com/sn10/SN10_USB_Serial_Notes.html

My portable PC (VAIO) runs on Vista.

I bought a USB-RS232 cable (unknown trademark , manufactured in
China), installed the driver ...and was not able to connect the Zander
GP941 logger.

Anyone with a reference for a cable that is working fine in this
configuration?

Regards,
Bruno

I give up. I had problems with talking to a SN10 using a DOS program
running on Win XP Pro, the problem went away when I used a PCMCIA to
serial adapter to get serial hardware. Jumped to a conclusion,
apparently - sorry.

-John

On Feb 23, 2:36 pm, DRN wrote:
Warning, further confusion posted above...
* ILEC SN10 software includes versions for 32-bit Windows
AND 16-bit Windows/DOS.
* DOS versions of SN10 and many other programs run great
under "simulated" DOS, including:
- DOSbox (runs your ILEC software on a Mac with no Windows)
- PC emulators that run on PDAs (as above)
- etc.

For PCs, we recommend Belkin USB-to-serial adapters, as
Belkin drivers have fewer bugs, exist for 64-bit windows, etc.
Many adapters will only function correctly at certain settings,
which *might* be what you need - or not.

On Feb 23, 10:55*am, "Paul Remde" wrote:
Hi,

I have a friend that has an LX Colibri (the older model without a USB
connector) and he is having a tough time getting it connected to his new
laptop. *The manual I found online for the laptop does not show it having a
PC Card (PCMCIA card) slot or an ExpressCard slot.

I have had the best luck connecting to soaring instruments using either a PC
card serial port or an ExpressCard serial port.

I have not had any real success using a USB to RS-232 Serial adapter cable.
However, I have seen postings on this newsgroup from glider pilots that have
found USB to serial adapters that work well for them.

Please let me know if you have found a USB to Serial adapter that works well
for you with soaring instruments. *Please include the make and model #.

Thank you,

Paul Remde
Cumulus Soaring, Inc.

I used a Belkin adapter with mixed results with the Colibri. One of
the things to look at is the port that it gets assigned to. The
Belkin would get assigned comm port 3 or 4 and SeeYou would only let
you have options of 0 and 1 so would not recognise the unit. Wish
SeeYou would allow more port options. I could hard reassign the ports
and make it work.

I ended up back with the serial cable, but my old laptop still had a
serial port.

On Feb 23, 12:24*pm, Tim Taylor wrote:
On Feb 23, 10:55*am, "Paul Remde" wrote:



Hi,

I have a friend that has an LX Colibri (the older model without a USB
connector) and he is having a tough time getting it connected to his new
laptop. *The manual I found online for the laptop does not show it having a
PC Card (PCMCIA card) slot or an ExpressCard slot.

I have had the best luck connecting to soaring instruments using either a PC
card serial port or an ExpressCard serial port.

I have not had any real success using a USB to RS-232 Serial adapter cable.
However, I have seen postings on this newsgroup from glider pilots that have
found USB to serial adapters that work well for them.

Please let me know if you have found a USB to Serial adapter that works well
for you with soaring instruments. *Please include the make and model #.

Thank you,

Paul Remde
Cumulus Soaring, Inc.

I used a Belkin adapter with mixed results with the Colibri. *One of
the things to look at is the port that it gets assigned to. *The
Belkin would get assigned comm port 3 or 4 and SeeYou would only let
you have options of *0 and 1 so would not recognise the unit. *Wish
SeeYou would allow more port options. *I could hard reassign the ports
and make it work.

I ended up back with the serial cable, but my old laptop still had a
serial port.

Since this has gotten all geeky - has anybody tried the RS-232-to-
Bluetooth adapters on the sailplane instrument side and if so can
something like SeeYou output to the laptop's internal Bluetooth
adapter or do you need to go USB-to-RS-232-to-Bluetooth or USB-to-
Bluetooth on the PC side. It sounds lazy, but as a practical matter
I'd love to be able to upload tasks and download flights between
SeeYou and my flight computers from the airconditioned comfort of my
car. It makes it a lot easier to read the screen too.

BTW - I'm running SeeYou on a current generation 13" MacBook (with the
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics controller, but not the dual
controllers of the MacBook Pros). I'm running both Bootcamp and
Parallels Virtual Machine. Both are running Vista - mostly because
Best Buy was out of XP. Both configurations work great! Under
Parallels the 3-D playback with satellite terrain images starts to get
a little jerky with above about a dozen gliders - as good as my old
StinkPad. Bootcamp is faster, but lacks the convenience of Parallels.
It's also pretty darn stable - surprisingly so. I've not yet tried
hooking the Keyspan adapter, but it's good to know that the host OS
takes care of all of the monkey motion for you - thanks Darryl.

9B

With a whole bunch of gliding and engineering instruments equipped
with serial ports, I have found no reliable way to use a USB to serial
converter. The problem is the allocation of ports, as mentioned by
another responder. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Even
when they do, they often hijack a port already being used by another
application.

My colleagues and I have dealt with this by using only computers with
a real serial port or in the case of some laptops, a docking station
or port replicator that has a serial port built in.

You can't always rely on devices with a USB connector either. I have
found a couple that have internal serial connections and an internal
USB to serial converter that behaves exactly like the after-market
ones.

Just don't so it! The effort of fighting conflicts is just too much
(unless you have a Mac).

Mike

On Feb 23, 1:21*pm, wrote:
On Feb 23, 12:24*pm, Tim Taylor wrote:



On Feb 23, 10:55*am, "Paul Remde" wrote:

Hi,

I have a friend that has an LX Colibri (the older model without a USB
connector) and he is having a tough time getting it connected to his new
laptop. *The manual I found online for the laptop does not show it having a
PC Card (PCMCIA card) slot or an ExpressCard slot.

I have had the best luck connecting to soaring instruments using either a PC
card serial port or an ExpressCard serial port.

I have not had any real success using a USB to RS-232 Serial adapter cable.
However, I have seen postings on this newsgroup from glider pilots that have
found USB to serial adapters that work well for them.

Please let me know if you have found a USB to Serial adapter that works well
for you with soaring instruments. *Please include the make and model #.

Thank you,

Paul Remde
Cumulus Soaring, Inc.

I used a Belkin adapter with mixed results with the Colibri. *One of
the things to look at is the port that it gets assigned to. *The
Belkin would get assigned comm port 3 or 4 and SeeYou would only let
you have options of *0 and 1 so would not recognise the unit. *Wish
SeeYou would allow more port options. *I could hard reassign the ports
and make it work.

I ended up back with the serial cable, but my old laptop still had a
serial port.

Since this has gotten all geeky - has anybody tried the RS-232-to-
Bluetooth adapters on the sailplane instrument side and if so can
something like SeeYou output to the laptop's internal Bluetooth
adapter or do you need to go USB-to-RS-232-to-Bluetooth or USB-to-
Bluetooth on the PC side. It sounds lazy, but as a practical matter
I'd love to be able to upload tasks and download flights between
SeeYou and my flight computers from the airconditioned comfort of my
car. It makes it a lot easier to read the screen too.

[snip]
9B

Exactly. I want to do the same, maybe not sit in my car but certainly
be able to walk up to the glider with my MacBook and download flights
or mess with settings in the Cambridge without messing with cables.

I've not tested this yet, I've been too busy playing at home with my
iPAQ 310 PNA, including driving SeeYou Mobile with the Silent Wings
simulator NEMA output, either via a K6 BT adapter connected to a
Keyspan USB-to-serial adapter or via the Mac's internal bluetooth
adapter. Once I fly with it more and install the K6 adapter in the
glider I plan on testing this.

Darryl

Exactly. I want to do the same, maybe not sit in my car but
certainly
be able to walk up to the glider with my MacBook and download flights
or mess with settings in the Cambridge without messing with cables.

I've not tested this yet, I've been too busy playing at home with my
iPAQ 310 PNA, including driving SeeYou Mobile with the Silent Wings
simulator NEMA output, either via a K6 BT adapter connected to a
Keyspan USB-to-serial adapter or via the Mac's internal bluetooth
adapter. Once I fly with it more and install the K6 adapter in the
glider I plan on testing this.

Darryl

Great - since we're neighbors maybe we can throw a Bluetooth party.

Here are some web links on adapters:

http://aaxeon.com/s.nl/sc.7/category.8777/.f

http://www.ipenabled.com/bluetooth-rs232-usb.html

Note that these are Class 1 devices with 100 meter range rather than
the Class 2 devices with 10 meter range found in most PCs and phones
so maybe I can sit in my car. They appear to work on up to 12v so
perhaps you can just wire it into the panel power. Would be neat.

9B

Hi,

Just to clarify. I am pretty good at working with the Windows Device
Manager and I know I installed the provided drivers. The USB to serial
adapter I bought (I can't find a brand marking on it) does not work with any
soaring instrument.

I will try the Belkin one recommended by Dave Nadler. Hopefully that will
get my friend connected to his Colibri.

Good Soaring,

Paul Remde

"Darryl Ramm" wrote in message
...
On Feb 23, 11:07 am, jcarlyle wrote:
I stand corrected! What I was trying to do was to try and prevent
someone not as well versed as you to buy a USB serial adapter, plug it
into Windows running as the sole OS, and then wonder why his DOS
program wouldn't talk to his SN10. Naturally, there are many ways to
skin a cat - especially if you are a computer expert.

-John

On Feb 23, 1:54 pm, Darryl Ramm wrote:

I could not resist the ONLY in caps. That would be only EXCEPT if you
run Windows (or even real MS-DOS) within a VMware virtual machine with
the USB-serial adapter running on the host OS. Then the software in
the virtual machine won't care and cannot tell there is a USB adapter
involved.



Your advice was great. My expectation is that many users have problems
with USB adapters, even with plain Windows apps. And many of those
users will give up because dealing with Windows device management is
too hard and they did not realize they probably needed to load
drivers.

In Mac land, the Keyspan is one of the few (only mainstream?) USB
adapter that has driver support. It works but has a few bugs (The
Keyspan driver can panic OS X if I do unnatural things to the device
at very high baud rates, much faster than any flight computer can
talk. It has never failed in normal use). I have notes on using this
and debugging general serial port things that I keep meaning to finish
and post on my blog.

Darryl

(Who remembers writing MACRO-11 and FORTAN code to talk to DHV11
serial muxes on RT-11. And is now feeling old.)

I have an AirLink101 USB to Serial adapter and it works just fine with my
Garmin 76 to download igc files.
Works with SeeYou and other GPS grabber (GPS Dump) programs. The Garmin 76
came with a 4pin to Serial cable.

BT

"Paul Remde" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I have a friend that has an LX Colibri (the older model without a USB
connector) and he is having a tough time getting it connected to his new
laptop. The manual I found online for the laptop does not show it having
a PC Card (PCMCIA card) slot or an ExpressCard slot.

I have had the best luck connecting to soaring instruments using either a
PC card serial port or an ExpressCard serial port.

I have not had any real success using a USB to RS-232 Serial adapter
cable. However, I have seen postings on this newsgroup from glider pilots
that have found USB to serial adapters that work well for them.

Please let me know if you have found a USB to Serial adapter that works
well for you with soaring instruments. Please include the make and model
#.

Thank you,

Paul Remde
Cumulus Soaring, Inc.