usb to 232 converter and windows 7

[JChec]

Hi All,

Taking a long shot hoping someone has an idea on what the possible solution could be. Hoping I've just missed something obvious. I have a customer who is using the NI usb to 232 converter. The software he is using is emh camcal software. He says the comms worked fine on his XP machine, then he moved it across to a machine with Windows 7. He installed the latest driver, NI serial 3.5.1 I think it is, which supports Windows 7. Now the communication doesn't work. I've got him to run the troubleshooting wizard for ni serial and everything seems fine.

The client says he's tried a cheap usb to serial converter in place of the NI product and everything has worked. Maybe its got something to do with the configuring of the com ports when the device is plugged in?

Thanks,

Jevon

[cirrusio]

Hey Jevon,

In regards to configuration, RS-232 should be relatively simple to setup - unlike RS-485 I am not aware of any alternate topologies that you have to configure before you can communicate.  Are there any  settings in MAX that you can adjust?  Are you able to successfully perform loop-back tests? (I am not sure what the NI troubleshooting wizard is).

Peace, Matt

[Stranman]

JChec,

I haven't had any issues using any USB-RS232 converters in LabView.  One thing to double-check is that from one computer to the next Windows may auto-assign the COM port numbers differently, so make sure you are reading the correct port. 

Just because one computer configures it as COM3, the other computer may assign it COM4 because a COM3 was already present.

-P

[JChec]

Thanks everyone for the replies... I'm just trying help a customer out. Think he has done some loop back tests. Will relay some info on to him and will post back what the results are.

Thanks

[Jim_S]

Hello Jevon,

Here is a few other things I would try. First does the Windows 7 machine see the COM port in the device manager? If it does, I would make sure to see if MAX sees the device on the customers machine. From MAX you can test the connection with it by using the NI-Serial communicator. I have copied the steps to do this from the manual below.

1. Launch MAX.
2. Expand the My System directory by clicking the + next to the folder.
3. Expand the Devices and Interfaces directory by clicking the + next to the folder.
4. Select your serial interface and expand it to see its ports by clicking the + next to its name.
5. Right-click on the serial port you want to use and select Communicate with Instrument. This launches the NI-Serial Communicator.

Depending on the result of this test, the problem could be with the serial converter or the program communicating with this device. There is a Knowledgebase that contains a lot of different ways to debug these problems and the URL is below.

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/E8CAFBC41A7B9BF086256D3C00650011

JimS