Monitoring a serial port’s data traffic (COM).

Overview:

Sometimes in serial communication, multiple devices can have been set up incorrectly when connecting to a serial port. These settings will cause a connection failure with the port, and the software/hardware will not perform any data exchange with the application.

These errors are common when the user does not check whether the serial port is already busy and being used by another device, thus directing multiple devices to the same port (COM). The several connection attempts, such as the ones occurring either at Elipse E3 or Elipse SCADA, can be viewed at the driver’s log, but they do not offer information enough to allow the user to identify this situation.

Solution:

To check if the problem is not related to these settings, you can use a program for mapping serial ports, which will check data traffic in detail. One of these programs is the Serial Port Monitor.

This software (Serial Port Monitor) is used to monitor the RS232/422/485 ports, displaying via logs any data exchange existing between serial devices and any other application (example: communication with the driver in Elipse E3/SCADA). With it, you can follow, monitor, record, and analyze the functioning of any serial device or application, detecting failures and communication errors immediately.

NOTE: attached to this article is the tutorial for using Serial Port Monitor.