#34
dontsendbubbamail said:
:This leads me to believe that there is no standard protocol to go between a serial port and a USB port and explains why I cannot find a generic Windows driver.
There is a generic usb serial driver that is part of windows, but most products don't use it, instead they like to create their own drivers. They purchase a USB Vendor ID number, which gets passed to the operating system as part of the USB enumeration. I can't tell you why they wouldn't want to use a generic driver, but it probably has something to do with the fact that there is licensing and certifications involved. Technically speaking you can't claim to have a USB device unless you get a vendor ID code and pass certification testing that your device meets the USB standards. And if you don't do that, then you can't use the USB logos.
http://www.usb.org
PL-2303 USB to Serial Bridge Controller
You can find out from
this that Prolific Technology is vendor ID 067b and that this PL-2303 serial bridge controller is part of several products, their hardware identifiers are listed. The vendor ID and hardware ID (along with device class identifiers) are what tell windows you need a driver during enumeration, when you plug in the USB device. In some cases, which seem to be mostly keyboards, mice, and removable disks, it justs finds the driver and works. That should be possible with other types of devices too but rarely seems to work in practice. This is one of my pet peeves, which I was ranting about
here. You do have generic serial drivers, there are generic usb serial like for dongles and also the USB CDC device class. Let me put it this way: making a device that will "just work" in USB without driver install is not an easy thing to do, so most vendors don't bother, that's why it forces you to install a driver.
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#36
The way I understand it, there is a common standard among all of these USB-serial chipsets.
They all have to implement a specification, but how they implement is vendor specific.
There are also generic drivers but I haven't seen any usb serial products that use them.
Look here, but don't look for too long, just as you shouldn't look directly towards the sun for too long.
Universal Serial Bus Class Definitions for Communication Devices
I have a lot of respect for the hardware engineers who implement these USB specs in silicon.
These specifications are getting crazy complicated, and USB 3.0 is coming soon too.
The above are just the class definitions, the electrical specs are even more complicated.
Here's an interesting USB standard that I didn't even know existed until just now
Test & Measurement Class Specifications
This National Instruments VISA bus system is pretty interesting
I have seen how that works on several evaluation boards from other vendors that used the National VISA protocols
I'm playing around with an interesting USB hub chip. It's a dual host hub with downstream ports. So it can connect to two different hosts but have peripherals on the hub too. Very interesting. I could make a mobile device be a host, so you could plug in keyboards and such, but have data stored on a slave device, on the dual host hub. This way, the storage device could be available on PC or on the local device, both exactly the same way. Same could be true for other USB devices on the hub like audio or cameras or data capture.
Yikes I am way off topic, sorry.
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#41
This USB adapter part should be independent of the program. From the program's view it should just look like a serial port. So if one adapter doesn't work then perhaps another should be tried. You shouldn't need to try different drivers. Use the driver that came with the hardware. If it doesn't work with different adapters than maybe the program is not generic enough. Without source code it's anybody's guess. Soon I will join you folks in playing around with infineon controllers.
If the driver installed okay, and the serial port is there in hyperterminal, and you have the rx and tx looped back, but nothing returns when you type, then either the hyperterminal is not configured correctly or the adapter doesn't work. That's my take on it. It might be worth trying another terminal program too.
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#43
There's no drivers with the hardware? Sorry I haven't been following this whole situation. I mean the drivers for the USB serial cable. It didn't have drivers? Does this cable come with the controller? My belief is that any USB serial adapter should work. I can't see any reason why not. On the programming layer they all look the same for simple serial ie emulating RS232. The drivers may vary by hardware but the software interface should be the same. In some cases extra features might be added but this should be very simple asynchronous communication.
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#45
The cable is separate, okay and you said the driver installed, now if you go into windows device manager, somewhere in there you can view the vendor ID and hardware ID. If you can find out what those are perhaps more sense can be made of this. At least then you know what chipset it is! Can you find those two things in device manager (I prefer to call it device mangler hehe), look for the COM port and drill down in properties until you find a list of properties, look for vendor and hardware IDs.
Trying the same thing here ... plugging in USB serial into WinXP. The driver for this one came with the product.
Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> Ports (COM & LPT) -> USB Serial Port (COM3) -> properties -> details -> drop down menu -> look for hardware IDs
Mine says FTDIBUS\COMPORT&VID_0403&PID_6001
The VID and PID are vendor and product
Looking them up [url=http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids]here I can find the manufacturer and product.
From there you can get to their website, data sheets, drivers, etc.
Not all products are in that list but most USB serial chipsets are.
This one is vendor 0403 and product 6001, finding them in the list I see the vendor
0403 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd
6001 FT232 USB-Serial (UART) IC
This one is FT232 hardware chipset made by FTDI
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#47
That yellow exclamation mark usually indicates some kind of problem with a driver. Sometimes the device will still work but more often than not it won't.
Ideally you want to see it without the yellow ! exclamation mark. Bubba's information showed that it's a
PL-2303. But as I said earlier, I can't see any reason why another USB serial cable shouldn't work, it probably would need RS232 to TTL conversion (MAX232) and routing the RX and TX to the board. A USB-to-TTL would be even easier. But since more than one person has this prolific cable working, then I'm thinking something is either wrong with John's hardware or configuration of the driver or terminal program. First step is getting a driver install with no yellow ! As bikeraider said if you're getting ! then it's probably not the right driver.
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#50
Is the cable just a cable or is it a dongle? In other words, is this prolific chipset on the controller or cable?
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#52
You should be able to try another dongle fairly easily. They really need to ship drivers with that hardware.
I think that as long as you have a USB serial dongle with driver that works it shouldn't matter if it's prolific or some other.
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#56
Ah so methods has all of the goodies huh? There are little pockets of ebike goodles all over, most of which are hard to find!
