Play with Serial Ports

When you have to write a software that interact with a device using the serial port,  one of the problem is the simulation of it on the same pc without phisically connect to the phisical device.


Eltima Virtual Serial Port

A good closed source software that help us is in this case is Eltima Virtual Serial Port, this enable us to connect togeder two virtual serial port (virtual port pair).

So all what we will write on COM20 for example is redirected to COM21 and vice-versa so we can simulate the data traffic between our program and the device.

You can downlad the tryal install at http://www.eltima.com/products/vspdxp/

Realterm

This good open source software is a serial port terminal with multiple advanced functions (for electronic guys), you can connect directly to a serial por, type some text into it and , one of the feature that I apreciate is the logging function that write all the data received into a text file.

You can downlad the install at sourceforge :
http://sourceforge.net/projects/realterm/?source=typ_redirect

Here in this video you can see the Ethima Virtual Serial Port in action with Realterm.