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I am trying to use the Airconsole via WiFi with a Mitutoyo surface roughness gage with a serial port. I wasn't having any luck with USB to serial cable that ships with the unit. I then tried a USB to serial converter cable I purchased at Radio Shack instead of the supplied converter cable. I still had no luck. I then tried the following converter cable,

http://www.gearmo.com/shop/usb2-0-rs-23 ... ndicators/

This cable seems to be working fine with the roughness gage.

Can someone please explain to me what may be the difference in the cables that would cause the supplied cable to not work?

'm not sure what the difference between the serial adapter cables is. The one shipped with the Airconsole is based on the FTDI chipset which seems to be the same chipset as the one you had that worked.

The most common cause of the serial port not working is 1.) incorrect wiring, or 2.) incorrect line settings. I know it sounds silly but it may be worthwhile checking those?

The wiring pinout for the RJ45 serial cable supplied with Airconsole is documented in the shop - e.g. http://www.get-console.com/shop/en/usb- ... -30cm.html - I assume you are converting this to a DB9 presentation? If so, check that your adapter is the correct one (straight through vs. null, etc)

Some devices require that hardware flow control be set on before they will respond (e.g. RTS is signalled) - check the manual that came with your roughness meter to determine the correct line settings or experiment with settings these on/off.

Another (albeit very unlikely) difference may be the that cable supplied with Airconsole is presented as RJ45 which only has 8 pins; the RI pin is not connected as it is not used in most applications.

Hope that helps.

I have a Mitsubishi Alpha2 PLC that won't communicate via RS232 unless Pin 1 (Data Carrier Detect) is connected.

The Mitutoyo documentation of their comm port shows pins 1 and 9 as not connected. But that would possibly explain the difference.