Most individuals in most people haven’t any want for direct serial connections — there’s a cause that computer systems haven’t generally included serial ports in many years. However there may be nonetheless a number of tools that depends on serial communication and so working with that tools is tough when you’ll be able to’t discover a trendy pc with a appropriate port. Sadly, the everyday USB-to-serial adapters in the marketplace are very unreliable. That’s why Excamera created TermDriver and it was a very good resolution. Now they’re getting ready to launch the TermDriver 2 and it has all types of nice enhancements.
TermDriver 2 is a compact, self-contained system able to establishing serial communication with different units, with baud charges from 1200 to 2Mbit. It accepts each 3.3V and 5V, and it has each DTR and CTS management alerts. All the things else a couple of connection protocol is configurable, so TermDriver 2 ought to work with the overwhelming majority of serial units made within the final 50 years.
However whereas TermDriver 2 can talk with serial units all by itself, it’s actually meant to behave as a USB-to-serial adapter between a contemporary PC and the serial system. With a 32KB enter buffer, it could actually deal with various overflow. And since it maintains the serial connection immediately, timing isn’t a difficulty. These two elements clear up just about all the reliability issues that folks are inclined to encounter with typical USB-to-serial adapters.
That distinctive performance additionally makes TermDriver 2 able to exhibiting an emulated terminal all by itself. That seems on a 1.3” IPS show with a decision of 240×240 pixels, which is constructed proper into the system. It shows 60×23 characters and has full ANSI escape code assist, together with shade data.
That’s all doable as a result of Excamera constructed TermDriver 2 round a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, which has {hardware} serial ports and loads of reminiscence and processing energy for the duty. The RP2040 is on a small customized PCB, with only a handful of different elements. It has feminine headers on one aspect for the serial connection and a micro USB port on the opposite aspect for the connection to the PC.
It isn’t clear if Excamera will launch PC software program for sending instructions or information over the serial connection, or if TermDriver 2 will merely echo something ship over the USB connection (as you might do with the unique TermDriver).
If TermDriver 2 pursuits you, you’ll be able to join updates on the Crowd Provide web page.
