Create Driver through adapter

[Pith]

So I have a bike that can be controlled through the companies main software which sucks. A cable comes out of the back that results in a 3.5 mm jack, which I put a serial adapter onto and finally put that through a serial to usb converting cable. I was wondering then how to make this bike impliment with Labview. I imagine the communication to the bike is fairly simple being that it is all through a 3.5 mm jack cable.

[Albert.Geven]

I suppose there is a manual or other program that can be monitored while sending commands

[Pith]

But how do I watch how the data across the cable looks like and how can I implement it into labview?

[smercurio_fc]

What is the communication protocol? You said you put a serial adapter on it. It is actually RS-232? If so, you can use a serial port monitoring program, such as PortMon if you're on Windows. This will let you see what the company's software is doing in terms of communication.

[Pith]

So, this is what I've been getting from watching the port.

ÿHÿÿçÿÿIþÿçÿÿIþÿIþÿHÿÿçÿÿHÿÿæþÿæþÿIþÿIþÿçÿÿ

Just non-stop data like this.

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[Albert.Geven]

try to decode in hex or try to find more documentation

[Pith]

I'm not going to be able to find much documentation I think. How will turning it into Hex make it easier.

[Albert.Geven]

better readable for humans

[smercurio_fc]

Well, it's pretty obvious the information is in hex. The fact that it's nonstop indicates that either the application is continuously querying for status or the bike is continuously spitting out information. The former is more likely. Without a manual or something you're going to have a HARD time decoding that. You'd basically need to keep things static, change one thing, and see what gets generated. Then change something else and see what gets generated. Do this for a while and you might be able to figure out the protocol.

[Pith]

So, I should just run the program that the hardware normally works with and see what the program puts out and try to work from that? There's no way to clean up the data coming out so that it makes sense instead of just being indiscriminate?