USB to rs-232 adapter cable

[mikefamig]

Just a note that may save someone a little time in the future.
 
I needed to program a couple of old URC remote controls using PC software via serial port. I usually use a 15 year old Thinkpad laptop to do it because it is the only machine that I own that has a serial port but this time I decided instead to try a USB to serial port adapter.
 
I bought this cable, plugged it into my Lenovo Win10 laptop and it worked right out of the box. I have read that it would require adding a driver in earlier versions of Windows. The cable uses the Prolific PL-2303 chipset
 
https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=103&cp_id=10311&cs_id=1031104&p_id=3726&seq=1&format=2
 
The USB kept connecting and disconnecting in the first USB port that I tried so i moved the cable to a second port and it works fine. I'm not sure if I blame the port being a little worn or if it has to do with the USB version of that port.
 
Mike.

 

[elcano]

I have always used the Digi Edgeport adapters and they work flawlessly. Some of them offer an utility for assigning the port number easily, but I don't know if this depends on the version of the driver or the chipdet inside the adapter. They use two different chipsets, one from Texas Instruments and another by Inside Out Networks. http://goughlui.com/2016/01/17/teardown-digi-international-edgeport8-rs-232-to-usb-converter/
They are very expensive ($70 street price at best for a single port), but after using over 30 of them over 12 years I still haven't seen a single one fail (USB, PCI or ISA cards).
My frustration is that I haven't been able to make them work on ARM devices (Raspberry Pi or QNAP NAS). I want to use one USB-to-serial converter to connect to an UPB PIM to see if I can monitor and control my lighting from the network.

 

[pete_c]

Here also have been utilizing Digi Edgeports for quite a while now.  I have not had one fail.  I was using them for my irrigation and a lightning strike took out my two Rain8Net controllers and didn't affect the 8 port Digi Edgeport connected.
 
Over the years (about 5-6 years ago) switched over to using a Dockstar Debian computer to run my irrigation with a tiny USB to RS-232 device which has now worked great independant of the automation mothership.  Attached to it is a WGL W800 device for remote controlling irrigation zones outside.
 
I have switched my automation to using Ubuntu Linux and RPi Wheezy/Jessie.  I do use one RPi2 running Jessie today as a slave device with a USB to serial connection to an HAI UPB PIM, CM11a today.  The RPi2 has a Z-Wave dot me GPIO card and a PiFace RTC shim and has run just fine as a Homeseer remote slave.
 
I am not sure if there is a Linux generic driver for UPB.  There is for Z-Wave, Zigbee and X10 today.
 
Well looking a bit there is MisterHouse which uses perl and does have UPB drivers.
 
You should be able to see the USB to Serial ports by doing an lsusb which well show you the specific devices.  With more than one serial to USB device you can assign static usb configuration.  Note that it is easier with a Digi Edgeport as the serial ports match the device names.
 
Here the main mothership monitors UPB or vice versa with the Leviton HAI OmniPro 2 combo panel.