NE500 syringe pump over serial-to-usb interface

Support
1

Hi Chris,

I am trying to get the syringe pump to work with a serial-to-usb interface, but am unsuccessful. Does the NE500 plugin work with a serial-to-usb cable? If so, how do I address it? If not, is a serial-to-ethernet bridge the only way to go?

Thanks in advance,
Bram

2

Hi Bram,

Does the NE500 plugin work with a serial-to-usb cable?

Currently, it does not, and a serial-to-Ethernet bridge is required. (I have one from StarTech.) Adding support for serial-to-USB cables is on my to-do list.

Cheers,
Chris

3

Ok, I’ll start with the startech. Thanks a lot, Bram

4

Hi Chris,

I’m just trying to understand why the serial-to-usb cables don’t work. I have used several different brands in the past (probably all using similar or the same underlying chipsets) and they expose a character device in /dev/, which I presume is the way MWorks talks to the serial to ethernet port too.
Is all that right?

thanks,
Mark

5

Hi Mark,

I’m just trying to understand why the serial-to-usb cables don’t work. I have used several different brands in the past (probably all using similar or the same underlying chipsets) and they expose a character device in /dev/, which I presume is the way MWorks talks to the serial to ethernet port too. Is all that right?

No. MWorks communicates with the Ethernet end of the serial-to-Ethernet bridge, via a TCP socket. The bridge forwards the commands from MWorks to the pump via its built-in serial port. While the commands themselves aren’t different, the transport is.

Modifying the NE500 plugin to support both serial-via-Ethernet and “direct” (via USB) serial connections isn’t a huge job, but it will require an entirely separate code path for setting up the serial connection. That’s the part that’s missing currently.

Chris

6

I see.

From our point of view I think a serial-USB driver would be low high priority, then. Once we have the serial-ethernet gear working we probably won’t have strong motivation to upgrade to serial-usb.

thanks,
Mark