Hello. I have an instrument along with vendor software for acquiring data from the instrument on a PC through RS-232 serial communication. I would like to acquire the data in LabVIEW instead of through the vendor software. The vendor has given basically no support in helping me figure out how to communicate with the instrument - they only offer up their software as the only solution.
I'm trying to figure out a way that I can perform the data transfer with the vendor software and essentially figure out the format of the communications and the commands that are necessary to send to the instrument. The two things that seem like possibilities are the following:
(1) Use some type of "spy" or "monitor" software for serial ports to capture and display the communications occuring between the instrument and the PC/software.
(2) Connect the COM1 port of my PC (through which the vendor software would be communicating) back to another COM1 port on my computer and connect the insrument to a 3rd COM port on my computure. Use either hyperterminal or LabVIEW to read what the software and instrument are trying to transmit to each other by iteratively reading from one port and then writing that to the other port.
Anybody tried this before? Any suggestions on which might work or work better/easier, or other ideas? I do not even know the port settings required (baud, etc.), so I would need to guess at those if I tried option (2), above. I've never used any serial port "monitor" software before, so I don't really know what to use or how well it might work for option (1).
Thanks.
