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Controlling 10+ serial devices?


PeterM1

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C4 Composer has drivers for B&B Electronics ESP902 and ESP904. A two or four port serial server that connects to your network by ethernet cable. http://www.bb-elec.com/product_family.asp?familyid=2

For 10 RS232 ports buy two ESP904s and one ESP902 and connect them to your router. Add the drivers in Composer and bind the RS232 port to your equipment in the software.

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Also, don't forget that you need to MANUALLY setup the serial ports on the ESP902/4 or Global Cache' units, since Director doesn't set the serial settings on those ports. You can find what you need to set them to inside the .c4i files for the devices, in the <serialsettings> section.

Baud Rate, Stop bits, Parity, etc. all need to get set properly or the driver can't communicate.

Good Luck with that, and what do you have on those 10 serial ports?

RyanE

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Also, don't forget that you need to MANUALLY setup the serial ports on the ESP902/4 or Global Cache' units, since Director doesn't set the serial settings on those ports. You can find what you need to set them to inside the .c4i files for the devices, in the <serialsettings> section.

Baud Rate, Stop bits, Parity, etc. all need to get set properly or the driver can't communicate.

Good Luck with that, and what do you have on those 10 serial ports?

RyanE

thanks for the note, just doing research on feasibility at this point. 3 Yamahas, 2 Pioneer plasmas, CAV, 777, projector, screen (can go to a relay), Elk, Compose PLC firewall, XM and I'm sure I've left something off :-)

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  • 6 months later...

I also have a need to support multiple serial ports at a head end rack location.

What would be terrific is for the HC300/500 to support USB to Serial expanders such as this product from USB gear. USB to 16 port serial expander for a little over $400.

http://www.usbgear.com/computer_cable_details.cfm?sku=USB-16COM-RM&cats=199&catid=493%2C494%2C474%2C199%2C461%2C106%2C1009%2C601

According to the website, no driver is required when this is connected to a linux server.

There are many other port options as well, such as 2, 4, 8, etc.

This would be incredibly convenient when the installation requires just one or two (or 16) extra serial ports.

The USB to Serial convertors also eliminate the need to configure the device separately (such as with Global cache and B&B ethernet to serial devices. Its also a lot less expensive (~ $25 per port versus $100 per port) than ethernet to serial convertors.

Would C4 please consider this feature?

Thanks

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  • 5 months later...
thanks for the note, just doing research on feasibility at this point. 3 Yamahas, 2 Pioneer plasmas, CAV, 777, projector, screen (can go to a relay), Elk, Compose PLC firewall, XM and I'm sure I've left something off :-)

You may also want to see if any of the gear you are looking at above can be controlled via Ethernet. Alot of new gear, stuff that came out in 2008 and later, can be controlled either RS232 or Ethernet.

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  • 5 weeks later...

No, a USB-Serial converter will *not* work plugged into a controller.

There is no way for you to install a driver for the chipset in the USB-Serial adapter, and there is no way for you to configure dtserver (which monitors serial ports and various other hardware) to recognize and monitor the additional serial port.

RyanE

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