Digi Portservers?

DerekHoffman

Does anybody have any experience programming a NI-3100 using a Digi PortServer TS-2?

I've got Digi's RealPort software installed so that I connect to the master using COM1. I can get a terminal window started and that seems to work just fine (echo on, help, everything looks normal), but when I try to upload a program, it will send the first 50K or so of devicesdkrt.jar and then the connection dies (sometimes it'll send 160K sometimes less).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Derek.

vining

Why are you using a Digi port server?

Auser

I haven't worked with Digi devices, but can tell you from experience that a large percentage of fake/add on/remote serial ports don't play nicely with AMX and C!#@$%n software when trying to perform any functions above and beyond opening up a terminal window. Most of those that behave badly seem to see character sequences in the data stream between the PC and the remote device which they interpret as commands to do something or other. The transfer effectively fails as they don't pass the information being sent to them to the serial port verbatim.

This is especially the case with most of the cheapy USB - serial converters on the market, but may also apply to Digi products.

vining

Next question. How are you using the Digi Port Server? Are you going USB via some serial/usb adapter to the Digi and then IP to the master or are you going IP to the Digi Port Server and then serial to the master. Either way still has me confused cuz you should just connect straight IP unless its your initial set up then you should use a simple USB to Serial adapter. A $45.00 item. Search the forum for links, I use an IO Gear GUC-232A (I think).

Yep that's the one I use.
http://www.iogear.com/product/GUC232A/

Hedberg

Apparently, Digi has a serial port "emulator" which seves as a serial-to-IP device at the PC end. The software running on the PC (Studio, in this case) "thinks" that it's connected to a serial port. I haven't tried the Digi, but I've experimented with different IP-RS232 devices with a couple versions of serial port emulation software and have not gotten Studio to work properly, nor the Iris nor the Cre$ton IR learner. I'm guessing that it's timing/latency issues, but I don't know for sure.

DerekHoffman

We have a corporate policy in place that prevents us from putting the controller on the network. So the plan was to connect a digi serial server to the programming port thus allowing us to maintain the system remotely. For example, I'm in St. Paul trying to program a system back in Detroit. I'm using Digi's RealPort drivers to emulate a COM port on my local machine and then pointing File Transfer to the virtual COM device.

If anyone knows the secret incantation that I need for the Digi drivers in order to get reliable transfers I'd be very appreciative.

Regards,
Derek.

vining

Well now the use of the Digi makes sense but technically that's connected to the network just not via the ethernet jack on the master.

So you're trying to connect through a local PC, hmmm. I have a Digi connected to my phone system but I use it in TCP socket mode and I think if you're trying to connect through your PC com port you have to use the RealPort mode. Isn't there an application on the Digi install disc that you have to run for that to work on the PC? It should be fairly simple to set up although the Digi's do have to many options. Are you going to VNC into the local PC and run NS2 on the local machine? If so Ultra_VNC has a nice file transfer feature that allows you to easily move files between the 2 PCs. If they're that security conscious are you at least using a secure VPN connection?