Serial How To

Serial How To

Serial port

Kiwkwai is fitted with a female DB9 RS232 connector and acts as a DCE (sends data on pin 2, receives on pin 3). A straight cable is required to connect kwikwai to the serial port of a PC.

Terminal

Serial communication configuration

• Serial settings
  • Baud rate is 38400bps
  • No parity bits
  • 8 data bits
  • 1 stop bit
  • no flow control
• FTDI drivers can be found here

Windows

• XP : For once, it might be simpler than another platform. The only thing you need is HyperTerminal and the FTDI driver installed.
• Vista / Windows 7 : HyperTerminal is no more part of the delivery.
  • Get the free "private edition" directly from the ftp server at ftp://ftp.hilgraeve.com/htpe/htpe63.exe
  • Use an OpenSource tool such as Tera Term Professional

Mac OS X

as usual with the MAC, there are (too) many ways to do the same thing. The solutions are going from the nice GUI to the good old command line. Here is a quick list of some solutions we tried:

• CoolTerm : Simple, works well but not appropriate for the firmware upgrade
• ZTerm : old but still working, and appropriate for the firmware upgrade
• the screen command line (monitoring only)

Use the following screen command in terminal to view serial data within the OS X terminal.

screen /dev/tty.usbserial-XXXXXXX 38400

To quit, type control-A, then control-\. (for US keyboard)

To quit, type control-A, then control-$. (for CHFR keyboard)

• the minicom command line

Install port

install minicom using the following command

sudo port install minicom

run minicom using the following command

sudo minicom

More about Serial Communication in OSX Terminal here.