Introduction to ports

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Ports in your computer

Incomputer hardware, a 'port' serves as an interface between the computer and other computers or peripheral devices. Physically, a port is a specialized outlet on a piece of equipment to which a plug orcable connects. Electronically, the several conductors making up the outlet provide a signal transfer between devices. Computerportsincommon use cover a wide variety of shapes such as round (PS/2, etc.), rectangular (FireWire, etc.), square (Telephone plug), trapezoidal (D-Sub the old printer port was a DB-25), etc. There is some standardization to physical properties and function. For instance, most computers have a keyboard port (currently a round DIN-like outlet referred to as PS/2), into which the keyboard is connected. In computing, a serial portis aserial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time (contrastparallel port).Throughout most of the history of personal computers, data transfer through serial ports connected the computer to devices such as terminals and various peripherals. While such interfaces as Ethernet, FireWire, and USB all send data as a serial stream, the term "serial port" usually identifies hardware more or less compliant to the RS-232standard,intendedtointerfacewith a modem or with a similar communication device. For its use to connect peripheral devices, the serial port has largely been replaced by USB and Firewire. For networking, it has been replaced byEthernet.Forconsoleusewithterminals(andthengraphics)itwas replaced long ago by MDA and then VGA. While nearly every server has a serial port connector, most non-poweruser workstations and laptops do not have an outwardly wired one as it is a legacy port, and superseded for most uses. Serial ports are commonly still used in legacy applications such as industrial automation systems, scientific analysis, shop till systems and some industrial and consumer products. Network equipment (such as routers and switches) often use serial console for configuration. Serial ports are still used in these areas as they are simple, cheap and their console functions (RS-232) are highly standardized and widespread. The vast majority of computer systems have a serial port, however it must usually be wired manually and sometimes there are no pins in the manufactured version. Inthissoftwarethe port that has been put to use in the COM1 port. You have to make sure that the COM1 port is available in your computer and available for use. The folowing pictures show the COM1 connectors:

Settings
Many settings are required for serial connections used for asynchronous start-stopcommunication, to select speed, number of data bits per character, parity, and number of stop bits per character. In modern serial ports using a UART integrated circuit, all settings are usually softwarecontrolled. Speed Serial ports use two-level (binary) signaling, so the data rate in bits per second is equal to the symbol rate in bauds. These rates are based on multiples of the rates for electromechanical teleprinters. The port speed and device speed must match. Although some devices may automatically detect popular personal computers, allowing for much higher baud rates, the capability to set a bit rate does not imply that a working connection will result. Not all bit rates are possible with all serial ports. Some special-purpose protocols such as MIDI for musical instrument control, use serial data rates other than the above series. The speed includes bits for framing (stop bits, parity, etc.) and so the effective data rate is lower than the bit transmission rate. For example with8-N-1character framing only 80% of the bits are available for data (for every eight bits of data, two more framing bits are sent). Data Bits Thenumberofdatabits in each character can be 5 (for Baudot code), 6 (rarely used), 7 (for true ASCII), 8 (for any kind of data, as this matches the size of a byte), or 9 (rarely used). 8 data bits are almost universally used in newer applications. 5 or 7 bits generally only make sense with older equipment such as teleprinters. Mostserial communications designs send the data bits within each byte LSB (Least Significant Bit) first. This standard is also referred to as "little endian". Also possible, but rarely used, is "big endian" or MSB (Most Significant Bit) first serial communications (see Endianness). The order of bits is not usually configurable, but data can be byte-swapped only before sending. Parity Parityisamethodofdetectingerrorsintransmission. When parity is used with a serial port, an extra data bit is sent with each data character, arranged so that the number of 1 bits in each character, including the parity bit, is always odd or always even. If a byte is received with the wrong number of 1's, then it must have been corrupted. However, an even number of errors can pass the parity check. The parity bit in each character can be set to none (N), odd (O), even (E), mark (M), or space (S). None means that no parity bit is sent at all. Mark parity means that the parity bit is always set to the mark signal condition (logical 1) and likewise space parity always sends the parity bit in the space signal condition. Aside from uncommon applications that use the 9th (parity) bit for some form of addressing or special signalling, mark or space parity is uncommon, as it adds no error detection information. Odd parity is more common than even, since it ensures that at least one state transition occurs in each character, which makes it more reliable. The most common parity setting, however, is "none", with error detection handled by a communication protocol. Stop Bits Stop bits sentatthe end of every character allow the receiving signal hardware to detect the end of a character and to resynchronise with the character stream. Electronic devices usually use one stop bit. If slow electromechanical teleprinters are used, one-and-one half or two stop bits are required.

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Flow Control A serial port may use signals in the interface to pause and resume the transmission of data. For example, a slow printer might need to handshakewiththeserialportto indicate that data should be paused while the mechanism advances a line. Common hardware handshake signals use the RS-232 RTS/CTS, DTR/DSR signal circuits. Generally, the RTS and CTS are turned off and on from alternate ends to control data flow, for instance when a buffer is almost full. DTR and DSR are usually on all the time and are used to signal from each end that the other equipment is actually present and powered-up. Another methodof flow control may use special characters such as XON/XOFF to control the flow of data. The XON/XOFF characters are sent by the receiver to the sender to control when the sender will send data, that is, these characters go in the opposite direction to the data being sent. The XON character tells the sender that the receiver is ready for more data. The XOFF character tells the sender to stop sending characters until the receiver is ready again. These are non-printing characters and are interpreted as handshake signals by printers and terminals. Ifallpossiblevalues of a character must be sent as user data, XON/XOFF handshaking presents difficulties since these codes may appear in user data. Control characters sent as part of the data stream, must be sent as part of an escape sequence to prevent data from being interpreted as flow control. Since no extra signal circuits are required, XON/XOFF flow control can be done on a 3 wire interface.

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How to configure the ports?

In thissoftware, we have used the first available port as default. Make sure that you have at least one COM port available in your computer and that you are not using the port for any other purpose, i.e, the port is free. Robosoft Systems 2.4GHz RF Module offers you the option for changing the COM port. This feature is provided to provde an uniform and seamless access of any available COM port in your computer. Please note that thereisonlyonephysicalCOMportinyourcomputer.Alltheother ports in your computer are virtual. If you are using any USB to Serial converter from your computer to interface your board, then ,you will most probably be usin a virtual port which can be anything between COM2 to COM255. To use this virtual COM port of your computer, we have provided the option to change it. Robosoft Systems 2.4GHz RF Module supports the use of COM Ports 1 to 16. Any effort to use any COM Port more than COM 16 will result in an error. Please refer to the debug section to know how to change the COM port of your device. If you are facing any problems with the COM port, or the software is flashing some error message like: "The COM Port is in access by some other program! Please close any application which may be using the COM Port first!", then please do the following troubleshooting steps: Check if any other program is using the COM port that you are using. The programs may include HyperTeminal or HHD Free Serial Monitor etc. If there are any softwares that are using the serial port, then stop those applications first and then try to connect using the COM Port Short the Pin number 2 and 3 of the serial cable and try to send any data from the Hyperterminal. If you receive the data in loopback, then you bcan be sure that your cable is alright.

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Which port have you connected the hardware to?

This section deals with finding out, to which COM port you have connected your hardware to! You will probably need to do this when you are not sure about the correct COM port or you are using a laptop and do not know the COM port number for sure. Let us see how to find out! Step1

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Step2

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Step3

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The above shown steps are the ones that you have to follow if you have to find out which COM port you have connected your hardware. To find out how to change the default COM port, you can click here. How to change the COM Port? As you have found out the COM port to which you have connected your hardware to, you will probably require to change it now. If you haven't found out the COM port and want to know how, please click here. Let's see how to change the COM port of your hardware now. Step1

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Step2

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Step3

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Step4

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Step5

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Step6

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