Portmon Freeware - Monitor RS-232 traffic

Joe Hebert

I don?t know if this is considered a tip or a trick but this freeware is certainly a treat. Have you got a serial device that you?d like to integrate but the only means of control is via the manufactures software? Fret no more?

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Portmon.html

From their web site:
Portmon is a utility that monitors and displays all serial and parallel port activity on a system. It has advanced filtering and search capabilities that make it a powerful tool for exploring the way Windows works, seeing how applications use ports, or tracking down problems in system or application configurations.

There?s an abundance of free tools available at sysinternals.com including TDiMon which monitors TCP and UDP on your local system.

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/TdiMon.html

I hope some of you find these tools as useful as I have. Portmon really came in handy when I wrote a Netlinx X-10 module. I used it to monitor traffic between my CM11A and a third party piece of software. The X-10 protocol is available to the public but monitoring the traffic made it much easier for me to understand and implement.

DHawthorne

Here's another nice comm tester:

http://www.bb-elec.com/product.asp?sku=COMTEST