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A very useful Serial Port tool

Posted: Tue 13 Oct 2009 1:11 pm
by kiwiradical
Some more adventurous users may find Eterlogic's freeware Virtual Serial Port Emulator useful for some situations. It's a higly configurable tool for setting up port splitting, port combining, virtual ports etc. http://www.eterlogic.com/Products.VSPE.html

Using it you can direct one serial stream to multiple ports, which may be useful if you want to utilise the output of one weather station to several different display options - be aware that it should only be 'read only' as the station may get confused if you try to send data to it from multiple sources.

It's also very useful for GPS input etc, when one GPS input can be accessed by several applications.

There's also many other capabilities e.g. sending a serial stream via HTTP or UDP etc. which may be useful for direct remote monitoring etc.

It might even help those using USB/serial adapters that get errors, you can send the usb/serial convertor input port to another created virtual port that can be accessed by Cumulus.(use the 'Splitter' option) I know in the GPS arena this has solved some USB/serial port to navigation program connection issues as the virtual port seems to 'behave' better for some reason for some software.

Cheers..

David

Re: A very useful Serial Port tool

Posted: Tue 13 Oct 2009 10:07 pm
by gemini06720
...Eterlogic's freeware Virtual Serial Port Emulator...
David, thank you for the link.

Although I have been using Virtual VP for a few years (and quite satisfied with its results), it is nice to have other options. I will install and test VSPE later on.

Re: A very useful Serial Port tool

Posted: Wed 14 Oct 2009 7:26 am
by steve
gemini06720 wrote:Although I have been using Virtual VP for a few years (and quite satisfied with its results), it is nice to have other options. I will install and test VSPE later on.
Note that you won't be able to use it as a splitter with a VP, as that uses a two-way protocol. It can only be used like that where the station continuously transmits and the software just listens, like with the Oregon Scientific WMR928 etc.

Re: A very useful Serial Port tool

Posted: Wed 14 Oct 2009 9:03 am
by gemini06720
steve wrote:Note that you won't be able to use it as a splitter with a VP, as that uses a two-way protocol. It can only be used like that where the station continuously transmits and the software just listens, like with the Oregon Scientific WMR928 etc.
Steve I had/have no intention of running (using) VSPE with Virtual VP - I do not need VSPE with Virtual VP.

I was able to create both a splitter device and a TCPClient device and was able to use Cumulus 1 with the Davis Vantage Pro weather station.

One of the problems I have encountered so far with the VSPE splitter device, is that it could/would not run Cumulus 2 by itself - although it was able to run two copies of Cumulus 1 simultaneously.

Re: A very useful Serial Port tool

Posted: Wed 14 Oct 2009 9:41 am
by steve
gemini06720 wrote:Steve I had/have no intention of running (using) VSPE with Virtual VP - I do not need VSPE with Virtual VP.
That wasn't what I said.

You said it was nice to have options other than Virtual VP. I assumed that by this you meant another option to connect multiple programs to a VP, which is Virtual VP's main purpose. I am pointing out for anyone who may not realise it, that you cannot use VSPE alone (i.e. as an alternative to Virtual VP) to reliably connect multiple programs to a single VP.

Re: A very useful Serial Port tool

Posted: Wed 14 Oct 2009 11:14 am
by gemini06720
steve wrote:...I am pointing out for anyone who may not realise it, that you cannot use VSPE alone (i.e. as an alternative to Virtual VP) to reliably connect multiple programs to a single VP.
No way ... even after a few additional hours of testing... :oops:

I guess you had/have tried VSPE before...