USB to Rs232

NETMF & Gadgeteer
1

Hi,

Trying to port my code away from gadgeteer to the Fez Cobra iii board I have purchased an arduino style GPRS shield with arduino style Rs232 shield. The problem is that there is just 1 UART in those arduino compatible pins so I am connecting my GPRS shield to Pin 0 and 1 to give me Rx and TX. I am now left with my Rs232 shield that I cannot use. I have the following options:

1.) Buy a new Rs232 connector and connect to on of the remaining other 4 UART pins that is available on the board.
2.) Connect my Rs232 to the USB slot using a Rs232 to USB converter. I would like to do this as first option if possible at all…My question is, is this possible and how do I go about this - is there perhaps someone willing to share code that was written to do this - and what device would you recommend if indeed possible.

Thanks for all the help.

Ps. I am very sad to see Gadgeteer go - I had a couple of devices in the field and it worked GREAT! RIP.

Riaan

2

Some of the GPRS Shields have jumpers to select alternative Arduino UARTs.

3

just also want to point out - Gadgeteer, the framework, isn’t going away if you don’t need anything else above what it does today. Sure, modules are going to get harder to buy - but you can DIY them if you need. It’s only as things evolve over time that you may find things are left aside until such time as the open sourcing of all the required bits happens (@ MCalsyn is beavering away behind the scenes on this). Otherwise, it is what it is today and you can keep using it if you want.

Onto your multiple UART challenge. Yeah this is why Arduino shields suck. if there is no jumpers, you can opt to bodge some in :slight_smile: Cut the tracks to TX/RX and solder wires from them over to the other pins you’ve chosen to use. What media connection do you need - is it a DB9 RS232 connection? USB devices are a little tricky (especially since most of us want to buy cheap - and that means they don’t always work nicely when connected to a Fez) but it’s pretty simple to do. See the “serial” section in the USB host doc https://www.ghielectronics.com/docs/36/usb-host for pointers.