USB to serial converter working ? and USB hubs attached to usb-serial converter

shelled

serial

shelled

serial

Thanks,

I guess I am really interested on the most recent experiences as I would expect the bad piece of hardware to have been weeded out from the list of offerings.

Jake.

I have used a number of serial to USB converters that ranged from generic unbranded ones to ones sold by Palm and Belkin. The Palm one has not worked reliably with anything but Palm devices. The Belkin has been very stable and I have not found a serial device (mostly with GPS receivers on PDAs) that I could not get to work with it.

One warning, don't plug in any serial/USB converter until you read the setup instructions. Generally, you are required to run the driver install before you plug the converter in and that seems to contribute to success in setting it up and getting it working. With the driver installed, the converter should plug and play the first time it is plugged in and found listed in the Port (COM & LPT) listing.

To see the range of types of and prices for serial to USB converters, browse them in an eBay search. You can see the variety without buying anything.

I've not used any USB hubs yet, but I would proceed carefully on how much load I put on a USB port. I would probably look for a hub that had a jack for a external 5V power source to let me take the load off of the USB bus when connecting many devices or a single device with a heavy draw. The USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 protocols limit bus supplied power to 2.5 Watts (0.5A @ +5V) per port so when you use a hub that 0.5A limit would have to cover all the devices on the hub. That is not much power if you add things like printers or external drives.

Jack

Jake, have a good read through the customer feedback on this one. Near the bottom of the page.

Go to ebay and get a used Edgeport USB-to-serial converter for ~$30 (4 or 8 port). Lot of good reviews on this product. You can also get the single port adapters. The top one below can be had on ebay for $10 and works well for my uses. The bottom one below with the screwed up square looking DB9 connector (with attach screws!) is pretty much junk (I can't get to put out a signal on the tx pin).

I picked up a couple of USB-Serial converters today for $15, they worked fine with no problems to several different devices. The drivers needed to be installed but other than that just plug and play. I have also used a USB to 4 serial port device without any problems. All of these were plugged into a USB hub.

You may also want to consider a USB-Bluetooth device and then some Serial-Bluetooth devices. There may be power issues for your sensors depending on what they are, the setup is more complex and the hardware more expensive but there is something to be said for wireless connections.

Newbie wrote:

Check out this thread in sci.electronics.misc

I had real difficulties with MCT's USB-Serial cable. The problem was, the cable would see GPS data coming in and think the GPS was a serial mouse.

Usually, mouse detection is done by Windows, and there are several ways to defeat it. With this cable, internal firmware did the mouse detection. Using a USB sniffer, I could see the cable identified itself with a different ID when the GPS was attached. Everytime I powered up, I had to unplug the cable, unplug the GPS, plug in the cable, then plug in the GPS. A real pain.

I tried to contact MCT, but never got a response.

In retropect, I should have tried playing with the RS-232 control lines. It might be, if I tied the status lines high (or low, or to DSR), the firmware might not get confused. Just a hunch. I ran out of patience.

Outcome? The cable went into the trash and my Garmin GPS16 is idle. I switched to GPS18s with USB.

- John

(Note: the GPS 18 Usb is not compatible with many software packages.)

Newbie wrote:

shelled

Are you sure you only have one usb port on the notebook??

Anway, I use a keyspan to drive my gps, program scanners, etc. I had to return a Belkin and IOGear.

I suppose you could get a multiport keyspan and avoid the hub.

Mark:

Do you have a title for this thread, I am reading this thread with google groups betas and the whole address is cut in half.

Thanks,

Jake.

Mark Haase wrote:

Cut and paste the two parts into the address bar in your browser.

Alternatively use this

Cut and paste the two parts into the address bar in your browser.

Alternatively use this

Have a look at the feedback down the bottom of:

Don...

Go to ebay and get a used Edgeport USB-to-serial converter for ~$30 (4 or 8 port). Lot of good reviews on this product. You can also get the single port adapters. The top one below can be had on ebay for $10 and works well for my uses. The bottom one below with the screwed up square looking DB9 connector (with attach screws!) is pretty much junk (I can't get to put out a signal on the tx pin).