RS232/USB Computer Interpretation

[RyanR]

I need to control 12 RS232/serial instruments with a labtop computer, which lacks any serial input or option for a pci card. The instruments operating manual has given me a great deal of information I can use for the NI Visa comands, which I plan to use, and for additional reasons, this is the only computer I will be able to use. I have thought of one possible solution, by taking a RS232/pci hub ( http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/207740 ), and putting it in a pci expansion chassis that could connect via usb to my labtop.

I was wondering however, will the computer, and specifically labview's MAX, interpret these instruments as RS232/serial ports. There is a lot of stuff (pci/usb/...) in between and I am not sure how this will effect my detecting the instruments, and reading and writing commands to them.

Thanks for any help/suggestions you can give.

[EricLarsen]

How about using USB/RS-232 converters? Such as this one:

http://sine.ni.com/n...ng/en/nid/14583

I've used these on a number of projects (although, I've never tried to use 12 ports on one computer). They work great, VISA sees them as conventional COM ports. You'll want to check power requirements, you might need a powered hub to drive 3 of these units.

[Yair]

You can also check out the recommendations I got here (although those are Ethernet ones, so you'll need a switch, etc.). I haven't done that project yet, so I have no results from that thread yet.