Interfacing of RS232 serial devices through USB ports within LabVIEW 6.1 and Windows 2000 Pro?

[FraserD]

I have a data acqusition requirement of using 5 RS232 devices, but the motherboard i use only has two serial ports. However, it does have 4 USB ports. Does anyone know if it is possible to use these USB ports to input data from an RS232 device through a serial to USB converter?

Does LabVIEW 6.1 support this under Windows 2000 Pro?

Thanks in advance,

Fraser

[Remzi]

Hi Fraser,
There is no generic USB driver is available for LabVIEW. Please take a look at the Knowledgebase article linked below for more info.

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/3efedde4322fef19862567740067f3cc/42b604435e3f9604862565e20043cd30?OpenDocument

You might consider using NI PCI-232/4 card to get additional 4 serial ports.

Remzi A.

[FraserD]

Thanks for the info. I'll try it with the driver they provide me.

[Bill Abbott]

I have had success using a USB to Serial Port converter with Labview 6.1 on Win2K platform. Windows sees it as a serial port and assigns it a COM port address. It works great!

[shabu]

Is that USB to Serial converter a separate piece of hardware?

[tsi]

unfortunately, i haven't had the same success. I tried to connect a serial port on my device to the USB on my laptop with a USB to Serial Port converter, but have had no success. I'm running WinXP, so i wonder if that may be the problem. Has anyone had any problems with WinXP in regards to this?

[unclebump]

I have used a BELKIN USB to ethernet device with labview and the DSC module with windows 2000. I have also seen serial port cards with up to eight ports on them. Try B&B Electronics. www.bb-elec.com. They also have ethernet to serial port adapters. You could also try products from DIGI. www.digi.com. They have some 16 port serial servers.

[JoeBlack]

Yes, I'm having the same problem with XP. I have a VI that works with a computer with 2000 but running 2 serial ports rather than USB.

[John Gig]

We have had nothing but problems (won't talk to device, hangs system) using a Belkin USB to RS-232 device (F5U-409).  We switched to a Keyspan (USA-19HS) and have had no problems.

[Ray.R]

---

@JoeBlack wrote:
Yes, I'm having the same problem with XP. I have a VI that works with a computer with 2000 but running 2 serial ports rather than USB.

---

Seems like Win-XP is causing lots of headaches when using the serial port...

If you do a search within this forum on "Win-XP & serial", you'll see a lot of posts describing issues with the serial ports & XP.  For instance: "this vi worked with Win-2000 but no longer with XP"...

We had our share of troubles with XPee.  In our case, using a USB to serial port seemed to be the solution for us.. 

JLV