I have been doing a lot of researching and reading as of late. One of the items that has become of great importance to me is a good Serial to TCP/IP converter, or server. A good number of audio companies are still using RS-232, 422 or 485 for various forms of communication, configuration and monitoring.

It’s not a real big deal to plug it in to a computer and get things talking, however if your rig is portable, finding a laptop with a COM port is becoming increasingly difficult. If you have multiple, remotely located serial devices, getting the system talking can become more complicated. One method is to convert 232 to 485 and run the balanced serial signal to a remotely located computer. Then there’s the discussion about using a 485 interface in the computer, or adapting the signal back to 232. Multiple COM ports can be a pain, even for experienced serial gurus. Enter the serial to TCP/IP converter.
We are running more and more CAT5 and fiber with our systems. Essentially the infrastructure to support packetizing serial already exists, all that is needed is a converter. I found some good options on SerialGear.com 1,2,4 and 8 port Serial to TCP/IP servers.

VS-NetCom 111 is an industrial-strength network-based serial device server for connecting ONE RS232 device directly to the 10/100Mbps Ethernet network running TCP/IP. In addition to allowing serial devices to get networked, any host (PC Server or Workstation) without network access can also access remote serial device via adding NetCom devices to the existing serial port.

SerialGear is part of a larger company called CoolGear.com , which has sister sites, CableGear, IRGear,AdapterGear, USBGear and many others.

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