Evening all.

I'm looking for a way to monitor a serial port, to see what data is being sent through it (sent and received) by another program. I'm trying to figure out the communications protocol between a battery charger I have (for RC batteries) and a bit of logging software that sits on a PC, and reads what the charger is doing via the rs-232 port on a pc.

The bit of software is only available for windows and I would like to find a way of logging the battery on charge/discharge whilst I am stood in a field flying my RC planes. The obvious method for me to use would be to connect the charger to the serial port of my PDA, but there is no logging software available, so I need to come up with something myself.

The easiest way for me to see what is going on is to be able to spy on the serial port, to see what is being sent/received. Then I can emulate that on a PDA, and be able to log the data away from a PC.

So, does anyone know of any decent (free if poss!) software that can do this?

Cheers
Andy

It might be possible to connect a second rs232 receive port across the tx line that your trying to monitor and capture the data from that.

Hyperterminal (come with windows as an optional install - dunno if its with xp tho) might be able to capture tha data for you.

atb

steve

HI Steve,

Yeah, I thought about using hyperterminal, but if I open it up and set it to read the COM port the charger is connected to, the windows software that logs the output of the charger says the com port is not accessible (may be in use by another program).

I did wonder about trying to monitor the serial cable lines using hardware (i.e. splicing another socket in that can see what is being sent/received) but I was rather hoping it could be done in software to save the hassle of messing with hardware!

Cheers
Andy

I used to get asked this question when I worked in network consultancy - basically you can do it but you need something like £10k of kit. It uses a Y cable and some dedicated expensive hardware and custom software.

There doesn't seem to be a cheap way of doing it......unless you Linux boys out there know different

Cheers

Mark

we do it often at work- a large part of my job is connecting various pieces of kit on older comms systems, 232, 485, 422

but you need some kit to do it, so I'm not adding anything useful to the discussion!

I'm pretty sure you can configure hyperterminal to use pass through mode, whihc shouldnt hold the other port open ...

http://www.hhdsoftware.com/sermon.html

Not free but you can try it