Controlling USB-RS232 interface

ruby-talk
1

Before reverting to C, et al, can I use Ruby to do this?

I have a ccd camera which has a 4 pin serial interface (pwr, gnd, txd,
rxd).
I have a board that provides a 9-pin rs232 connector which is used to
interface to it.
I want to control it with a notebook (Toshiaba Satellite) which has no
rs232 ports
and 3 USB-2 connectors. I have a USB-R232 (9-pin male) cable which can
connect
to the camera board. The cameral comes with a canned gui frontend app
which
interfaces to the camera and allows you to take pictures at different
resolutions,
but is basically just to verify that the system is working. I can only
run this software
on my old (circa 1999) desktop because it has a serial connector and
the software is
hardwired to use COM1. It's a simple windows program that I'm runnning
under Win 98,
and can also run under Linux (PCLinuxOS) using WINE. So I can take
pictures and
verify that the camera works under different resolutions under both
OSes.

I need to access the camera and take full control of its features and
functionality.
Thus, I need to fully control the command interface to the camers,
which requires
sending/receiving commands (6 byte codes) and receiving images. This
requires
controllnig the rs232 interface to the camera.

So, can anyone provide or direct me to code for controlling an old
rs232 serial port and a new
USB-RS232 serial connection?

Thanks in advance.

Jabari

2

Hello

I need to access the camera and take full control of its features and
functionality.
Thus, I need to fully control the command interface to the camers,
which requires
sending/receiving commands (6 byte codes) and receiving images. This
requires
controllnig the rs232 interface to the camera.

So, can anyone provide or direct me to code for controlling an old
rs232 serial port and a new
USB-RS232 serial connection?

The driver for your usb-serial adapter should make it appear as a
standard serial port to your applications.

If you searched the web for ruby and serial ports you should have
found some of the earlier discussions on the topic such as this:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/msg/1f72a79dd9760dc1?hl=en&

I would first try to use the real serial port to test the
communication. The USB-RS232 adapters tend to be less compatible than
the good old hardware for some reason.

Thanks

Michal

···

On 9/3/06, jzakiya@mail.com <jzakiya@mail.com> wrote:

3

Do the contents of the following thread help:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_frm/thread/21d9ef82f56346a/1f72a79dd9760dc1?lnk=gst&q=serial&rnum=1#1f72a79dd9760dc1

Or do any of these search results help:
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/vframe.rb?key=serial+port+programming&cginame=namazu.rb&submit=Search&dbname=ruby-talk&max=50&whence=0

4

jzakiya@mail.com wrote:

/ ...

So, can anyone provide or direct me to code for controlling an old
rs232 serial port and a new
USB-RS232 serial connection?

AFAIK as to Ruby, all such serial interfaces and their drivers, of the old
and new varieties, are platform-specific. You will have to make system
calls to get the results you are after, and the calls will vary by
platform.

···

--
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com