USB to RS-232 Serial Adapter Advice

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

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

It's probably worth trying to use the LXe software to connect. It is
shipped with the Colibri and may be more flexible in the ports it can use.



"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 =A00 and 1 so would not recognise the unit. SeeYou would
allow more port options. =A0I could hard reassign the ports and make it
work."

On Feb 23, 4:45*pm, Big Wings wrote:
It's probably worth trying to use the LXe software to connect. *It is
shipped with the Colibri and may be more flexible in the ports it can use..


"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 =A00 and 1 so would not recognise the unit. SeeYou would
allow more port options. =A0I could hard reassign the ports and make it
work."

I've had the same trouble with my Volkslogger. I got a docking
station for my laptop that has a serial port and has worked fine. I
do wish I had an adapter that worked. Any suggestions?

Dan Rihn
WO

On Feb 23, 10:37*pm, Dan wrote:
On Feb 23, 4:45*pm, Big Wings wrote:

It's probably worth trying to use the LXe software to connect. *It is
shipped with the Colibri and may be more flexible in the ports it can use.


"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 =A00 and 1 so would not recognise the unit. SeeYou would
allow more port options. =A0I could hard reassign the ports and make it
work."

I've had the same trouble with my Volkslogger. *I got a docking
station for my laptop that has a serial port and has worked fine. *I
do wish I had an adapter that worked. *Any suggestions?

Dan Rihn
WO

I don't own or regularly use any of the electronic instruments, so I
can't speak from direct soaring experience, but I use the Keyspan
KS-19a with Apple and Wintel laptops for programming microcontrollers
(Atmel AVR via STK500 or AVRISP, if anyone's counting). I switched to
this unit from a Belkin on the advice of some folks in the DIY
electronics community, and I'm very satisfied. I've even made it work
with a few Windows apps emulated through WINE on my Macbook. Through
WINE, I can just assign it to COM1. Not sure what the situation is
like on Windows, but I bet there's some Device Manager trickery to do
the same.

Ryan Spicer

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

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.

Hi Paul, I had trouble with easily-found USB-to-Serial interface
cables from Circuit City and BestBuy, trying to connect from a PC
laptop to my Volkslogger (a finicky piece of equipment), using
StrePla. One problem was Microsoft ActiveSynch, which does funny
things (I'm a techno-bozo and that's as good as the description
gets). If I disabled ActiveSynch, things generally went better (and
better yet when I was trying to load my IPAQ 3955 with Pocket StrePla,
but that's another thread).

The best serial adapter I've used is found at
http://www.pfranc.com/cgi-bin/P/USB_...min-GPS-cables ; they also
make a bunch of different Garmin plugs for cabling. They have worked
for me, and several friends. I recommend them - I have no financial
interest (I'd like them to be around for a long time). They make 4
inch and 6 foot ones (handy to put laptop on wing if downloading from
the glider). On one laptop, I had to re-install drivers (available
from the same site at http://www.pfranc.com/usb/usb.shtml#drivers)
before it worked.

You might want to search on your drivers, and update them - outside
chance it'd work. You might want to become a Pfranc too!

Dan