RS232 over Internet

M

mikei-ma

Active Member
I'm looking for a solution to remotely program devices with serial ports.  While I know there is general availability of products like the iTach products that allow local access of the port, does anyone know of an elegant solution that I redirect a program running on a PC to the iTach across the Internet?
 
Thanks!
Mike
 
Relating to hardware serial / USB stuff...
 
Here I have a couple of Quatech serial to IP servers.  I have tested these boxes to work fine remotely across the internet.. 
 
I've also tested the Digi Anywhere USB device and two Digi Edgeports (16 serial ports) remotely across the internet just fine
 
I thought it was a software question but reading it again it seems it is more of a networking question.  So port forwarding or VPN.
 
I've received some other responses outside of the thread, so I'll share them here.  It appears the best solution I've found so far is to combine a product by tactical software with a serial server, such as the IP2SL by iTach. Although az1324's link to Wikipedia yielded a list of other software providers that I haven't looked through fully yet.
 
I'd like to install/setup/support a client's lutron system (or any serial lighting/security system really) from my office.  I think this will work, but need to test it.
 
Thanks for the responses.
 
There's two ends to consider, one being the client side but there's also the software on your end.  Will that software support using a virtual serial port?
 
And doesn't Lutron already offer ethernet interfaces for their systems?  
 
Note, most serial gateways have limited security features.  You open up potential for risk to the client's network if aren't very specific about how you configure such things...  Making it easy for you might also make it trivially easy for someone else to hack it.
 
Personally I do not do this; just have tested it.  
 
Yeah; with something like this I would set up a VPN tunnel on the clients firewall (if you are concerned about security).  (but it also depends on the firewall and if you can change or modify the OS or the OS base allows this)
 
Easy to do these days and totally free.  
 
I have used Lantronix devices with their Comm port Redirector to do this sort of thing.
 
Digi is also another quality brand that I have used.
 
I've done a ton of work on this over the years - including a lot of experimenting with remote cellular RS232 terminals (airlink raven, tellular, serial over IP + cradlepoint)... all I can say is that your success is really up in the air; some terminals are very strict in the data flow they expect and any delays/quirks really screw it up; some have good checksums and error handling and can survive just about anything - but its all in how the terminal was built.
 
I also do a lot of remote help with people and rather than opening up full remote access, what I do for the people I support is set up a computer in their house that has the necessary software and connectivity and either do remote support with them as needed, or even just set up teamviewer or logmein with unattended access - that way all the software needed is on premise and the connection is local; all I need to do is get to the remote PC.
 
The RS232 to IP converters work OK - especially for occasional use - you generally have to manually connect/reconnect when you go to use them but that's fine for what you're doing as long as they work otherwise - but as stated above, make sure that if you go opening up firewalls and all that, you're handling security appropriately.  This is yet another reason I like the logmein solution - nothing is permanently bound to the existing network config or router - way too often end users will fall for the next big bundling service with uverse or verizon or comcast and have their modems/routers swapped out without any consideration for the manual port maps you've set up, then you get stuck troubleshooting it just to find out that they've undone all your work and now you need to go to their home to set things up again.  logmein will be immune to most of that.
 
I have had good results with the Sena LS110 serial to ethernet adapter. I have one on a HAI UPB pim and another on a fish tank controller. I use the included virtual redirector software with UPstart to access the pim. For the fish tank controller I have a script that connects to the Sena adapter with telnet and records the temperature / pH once a minute. Both just work every time and never need reboots.
 
I have such a thing, but it's specific to CQC so not of use to you. It's not terribly hard to create one really if you don't find a canned one that does what you need. Very few things require any significant twiddling of control lines, so you could leave that out pretty safely probably, and just have initial port setup support. Other than that, it's basically just passing bytes back and forth. Things like the GC-100 and such literally just take bytes you send them and pass them to the port, and vice versa.
 
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