Free serials software for linux

LibSerial provides a collection of C++ classes that allow one to access serial ports on POSIX systems like standard C++ iostream objects.

Member functions are provided for setting various parameters of the serial ports such as the baud rate, character size, flow control and others. LibSerials idea is to simplify serial port programming on POSIX systems.

When you have installed the above tools, run the following commands:

Installation:

./configure
make
make install

Note: The html documentation will not be installed by "make install". I will fix this in the future release.

slsnif is a serial line sniffer. It listens to the specified serial port and logs all data coming through it. slsnif works transparently for both the device connected to the serial port and the controlling software for this device. It operates by opening a pseudo tty (pty) and linking it to the actual serial port.
slsnif operates by opening a pty and linking it to the serial port. These are following parameters / options:
1. Serial port to open (required).
2. Name of the file to direct output to (optional, defaults to stdout).
3. Desired baudrate (optional, defaults to 9600 baud).
4. Timestamp On/Off (optional, defaults to Off).
5. Print ascii values in hex On/Off (optional, defaults to Off)
6. Print number of bytes transmitted On/Off (optional, defaults to Off).
7. Optional colors for timestamp, number of bytes transmitted and normal output.
8. Lock port On/Off (optional, defaults to On).
9. Use Unix98 ptys instead of BSD ptys (optional, defaults to BSD style).
10. Second serial port to open. If specified, this port will be used instead of a pty, thus providing an ability to log data between two serial ports.
Enhancements:
- Added ability to resynchronize ports at any time by sending a SIGUSR1 signal to slsnif. Useful for debugging applications that change port parameters mid-way, after starting the transmission. One example is pppd daemon, which sets initial parameters in the chat script, and changes them later, after chat script terminates.
- Added ability to use SYSV (Unix98) ptys instead of BSD ones (see -u and --unix98 parameters). This option can also be turned on/off from rc-file.

Tiny serial terminal is a simple and dumb tool to access serial ports. Mainly intended for use to access serial consoles of various hardware.

Usage:

Download: com.c
Version : 1.1
Size : 4607 bytes
MD5 : 73a394b6d5ad333c2bf542315e1a0b73
SHA1 : 53c8ea8a1d5450ac4237a20c843e1462acaaa96e

Building: cc -o com com.c
Usage : ./com /dev/device [speed]
Example : ./com /dev/ttyS0 [115200]
Keys : Ctrl-A - exit, Ctrl-X - display control lines status
Darcs : darcs get http://tinyserial.sf.net/
Scr.shot: screenshot.png (8862 bytes)

The ser2net daemon allows telnet and TCP sessions to be established with a units serial ports. Note that ser2net supports RFC 2217 (remote control of serial port parameters), but you must have a complient client. The only one I know it is kermit application (http://www.columbia.edu/kermit).
Enhancements:
- dataxfer.c, devcfg.c, devcfg.h, ser2net.conf, ser2net.8: Added a s banner token for printing out the serial parameters.
- ser2net.conf: Cleaned up the ugly banner3.
- Makefile.am: Add ser2net.init to EXTRA_DIST.
- configure.in: Move to version 2.3.

dsflasher is a utility to flash Dallas (Maxim) DS89C450 microcontrollers using a ROM loader.

Usage:

dsflasher -f [input filename] -p [serial port]

Serbert is a command line utility which performs a Bit Error Rate Test (BERT) on serial lines for Unix and its variants. It does this by transmitting bytes, and waiting for their uncorrupted return.

Serbert, however, does not provide a true Bit Error Rate Test (BERT), as it does not check the individual bits returned. It uses the operating systems standard serial interface, which provides the status of each returned byte.

COMSERV is a program that allows you to talk to a network terminal server such as a Xyplex MAXserver 1600.
The handy thing about this program is that the client side of the connection does not need to know anything about how to talk to the terminal server. COMSERV handles the connection details. Thus, you can use existing programs like tip to talk to devices attached to your network terminal server without any modification.
Also, you can use COMSERV to turn your Unix computer itself into a terminal server and serve up its own local serial ports over the network for remote systems to access. This is handy if you have several systems lying around and you want to utilize devices attached to their serial ports.
My primary motivation for writing this program was to expand the I/O capabilities of my FreeBSD home computer. I have many serial devices that I want to connect to my PC which include my modem, Palm Pilot, GPS, various micro-controllers, my EEPROM programmer, and other computers and printers. But with only two serial ports on my PC, I became annoyed at having to reach around the back of my computer and swap cables every time I wanted to plug in a different device. [I think all inventions are the product of the laziness of the inventor :-)] So I searched eBay and found a couple of these Xyplex terminal servers that looked promising, I bid on them, got them, and began hacking.
The only problem with using this type of device for serial expansion, is that if you use a program like tip on Unix (tip is a very basic but functional program to connect directly to a serial port), it expects to be able to open the serial port by opening a /dev/xyz device file that corresponds to a real serial device. The Xyplex, on the other hand, communicates to the Unix system via an ethernet network. In order to talk to one of the serial ports on the Xyplex, you need to establish a TCP/IP connection between your Unix computer and the Xyplex device at a particular TCP port. The TCP port you connect to determines which Xyplex serial port you connect to. For the Xyplex 1600, serial port 1 is TCP port 2100, serial port 2, is TCP port 2200 and so on.
Unfortuneately, tip, and programs like it, have no idea how to establish a TCP/IP connection to the Xyplex in order to transfer data to and from a serial device connected to the Xyplex.
This is what COMSERV does. COMSERV creates a set of pseudo-tty device files that are palatable to tip and other programs. COMSERV opens the master side of the pseudo terminal and the client program (tip in this case) opens the slave side. Data written on the slave endpoint comes out on the master endpoint and vice-versa. This mechanism establishes a connection between the client program and COMSERV. COMSERV then uses TCP/IP to establish a connection to the network terminal server.
Thus, data originating from the client program is written to the slave tty where is read by COMSERV. COMSERV then writes the data to the network socket to the Xyplex, which then passes it on to the designated serial port. Data originating from the serial device attached to the Xyplex takes the reverse path.
Only one instance of COMSERV is required to be running on your system to handle all of your network terminal servers (it can handle as many terminal servers and ports as the speed and resources of your system allows). COMSERV is designed to handle many connections in this fashion, and does so by multiplexing between them using asynchronous device and socket I/O.
While I wrote COMSERV to talk to a Xyplex MAXserver 1600, it should work with other manufacturers products as long as they follow a similar API. The Xyplex devices that I have are 16 port devices that connect serial devices to an ethernet network.
If COMSERV sounds useful to you, feel free to download and use it. The program is provided in source form, so you will need to extract it and compile it. If you use FreeBSD, simply do the following:
% cd /usr/ports/comms/comserv
% make install
I use it on FreeBSD 4-STABLE. I dont currently know of any outstanding bugs, but if you find and fix any bugs, please send me your fixes so that others can benefit from them as well.
If you do decide to use COMSERV, please note the accompanying license. In a nutshell, you can use it without restriction as long as you credit me and keep the copyright notice intact. If you happen to like it, feel free to send your thanks, letting me know. If you dont like it, let me know why, perhaps I can improve it. If you improve it, please send me your changes and Ill see about integrating them so that others can benefit from your improvements.
Enhancements:
- Implement a power of 2 backoff and retry for failing connections with a maximum 10 minute wait. This keeps from filling up the logs with failed repeated attempts.

Device::SNP is a Perl extension for the GE Fanuc SNP-X serial protocol as used by GE Fanuc DataPanel data terminals. See http://www.gefanuc.com/en/ProductServices/VisPCSolutions/DataPanel/index.html

SYNOPSIS

use Device::SNP;

my $s = new Device::SNP::Slave(
Portname => /dev/ttyUSB0,
Debug => 0);
$s->run();
Amarok serial interface program: datapanel.pl [-h] [-d] [-p portdevice]
portdevice defaults to /dev/ttyUSB0

ABSTRACT

This Device::SNP module contains an implementation of the GE Fanuc SNP-X serial protocol as used by GE Fanuc DataPanel data terminals. See http://www.gefanuc.com/en/ProductServices/VisPCSolutions/DataPanel/index.html

DESCRIPTION

DataPanels are usually used with PLCs to monitor and control industrial equipment. They provide a programmable bitmap display, programmable function keys, and can poll and display data values and set data values in a remote PLC using the SNP-X serial protocol.

The Device::SNP::Slave object implements an SNP-X slave, opens a Device::Serial port and answers SNP-X requests to read and write data to a simulated PLC.
This package also contains a sample application that uses a DataPanel 160 to implement a remote control panel for the Amarok music player on Linux, allowing you to play, pause, next, prev tracks etc.

DataPanels are programmed with a GE application called DataDesigner, available from the GE web site for registered customers. Included in this package is a database for DataDesigner 5.2 for the Amarok remote control application. You will need DataDesigner 5.2 to download the datadesigner/linux.DTB database to the DataPanel 160

Tested on SuSE linux, but should run on pretty well any Linux or Unix.