Serial Port monitor program

ab3id

Please recommend a reliable serial port monitor program. I have tried Free Serial Port Monitor and see character data I expect but the numeric data is not matching that of the originating program ( in this case a satellite tracking program sending azimuth and elevation to a data exchange program, esp Orbitron to Wispdde). I have tried various baud rates and data types but my program stores none of it and so sends nothing to the LCD display. The LCD display works fine for character data and demo programs.
thanks, Gary

Indrora

if you *really* want to monitor data over a serial line, the easiest is to literally *wire-tap* the line.
Something like this:

  .------>1
  |.----->2
  ||.---->3
1>o++---<1
2>-o+---<2
3>--o---<3
[noparse][[/noparse]etc...]

-- this essentially wires each line of the incoming/outgoing to another line (listen via another serial line)

My favorite method has to be the following though:

---.--.-------.--.-----------.--.---
   |.:|       |.:|           |.:|
   |::|       |::|           |::|
   |*:|       |*:|           |*:|
---`--`-------`--`-----------`--`---

First two are male DB9 ribbon cable connectors, while the third one is a Db9 female. Note that I base this off the *general* format (that is, the project boards and carrier boards)

If you're concerned about overpowering from the fact you're running two cables, you wont have a problem. The most that could happen is if both lines try to send at the same time.


However, what it sounds like to me is a protocol issue. If you know the exact baud, pairity, and flow control, its not a matter of *storing* data (which, even if you're using a BS1 should be no big deal, as AZ/EL can be stored as 2 Bytes each (the only problem is there's no floating point math)
To Be Completely Honest, I dont know enough about the specifics, but this sounds like a formatting issue and not a problem with the serial line. All else fails, use a null-modem cable and see how the data is formatted from this sattelite tracking app. A terminal like Realterm will be useful.

SRLM

Parallax has a serial terminal program:

Parallax Serial Terminal

fiveslo

A really neat program for monitoring serial traffic is TAL Breakout found here:

http://www.taltech.com/TALtech_web/news/breakout.htm

It allows thru the use of two serial ports to see what's actually flowing thru the serial cable from device to device.. really great program when you need to see "inside" serial communications....

ab3id

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll post results after I get a chance to trying them tonight.
Gary AB3ID

HDowns

I think that your device sends binary data to the port. Therefore a typical serial port monitor program will not help you, because you want to decode your binary data to a readable value. Therefore I would offer to try AGG Software's Data Logger. This datalogger includes a parser that can help to decode your data (of course, you should know the format of your data).

--

Helen