Interesting comms idea

A product that is made by the company I work at uses an interesting device made by digiconnect. Digi Connect 9210

From my understanding this is a form of Serial to ethernet convertor.

I am wondering if it might be worth looking in to using this with the duet board rather than the inbuilt webserver, that isnt really that powerful. This would allow me to control my ormerod from anywhere on my network using pronterface.

I know that the drivers allows you to create a virtual comport for the device.

Any ideas on if this may be possible?

Excuse the poor grammer and spelling as I am rather hungover and will tidy the post up when my brain starts working.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/28/2014 09:47AM by trilby.

Looking at the device you linked to, it does not appear to have a USB output, which would therefore not allow it to easily connect to the Duet board. You would have to add a USB to serial device and then write a driver for its ARM CPU to drive that USB convertor. If you are into coding, the Raspberry Pi could be programmed to drive the Duet via its USB port from data sent to the RP's ethernet port (in fact there is already free software available to download that will do that). The RP could also be interfaced to a touchscreen display and allow the Ormerod to be used standalone.

Dave
(#106)

Isnt the Duet already handling serial comms in some form or another (even over usb) as computers recognise it as a com port. I will admit I have not studied much of how the duet works

Making a breakout board for the unit would not be a problem as I have a few of the modules knocking around my desk.

It is just a thought I have been having.

Quote
trilby
Isnt the Duet already handling serial comms in some form or another (even over usb) as computers recognise it as a com port. I will admit I have not studied much of how the duet works

Well, USB is itself a serial device, but with a heck of a lot of protocol overhead. So is Ethernet :-) The driver installs itself as a serial port merely as a convenience so that upper level programs can easily communicate via the driver - most programming languages have a relatively simple way of opening and communicating via a COM port so the programmer does no have to be adept at any remotely low level stuff. It also allows the user to communicate in an ad-hoc way by using a terminal program such as Putty. You will find bluetooth drivers that do the same thing - as do many other drivers for devices that have nothing to do with any serial communications. I have an A/D dongle that announces itself as a COM port, for example.

Dave
(#106)

Fair enough back to the drawing board then. Do you have any links to these raspberry pi projects you mentioned earlyer.

It was mentioned in another thread - [octoprint.org]

Dave
(#106)

In order to use Pronterface over ethernet, you will need a usb to ethernet adapter. Something like the following should do the job:
BYTECC

Note that most high-end WIFI routers have a USB port that is intended to connect a normal USB printer directly to the router. You should be able to make that work with the Ormerod as well.

Disclaimer: I have not tried any of these myself.

Quote
Flyskyhy
In order to use Pronterface over ethernet, you will need a usb to ethernet adapter. Something like the following should do the job:
BYTECC

Note that most high-end WIFI routers have a USB port that is intended to connect a normal USB printer directly to the router. You should be able to make that work with the Ormerod as well.

Disclaimer: I have not tried any of these myself.

As I have just posted in a different thread, by far the best way to go would be to add a new TCP/IP port to the Duet firmware so that it is capable of sending/receiving its data both via that new port or its USB. A simple driver on the PC can them present that TCP/IP port as a COM port to the OS, and Pronterface (or any other program) will be able to communicate to the Duet.

Dave
(#106)