[SGVLUG] USB/RS232 adapters

[Claude Felizardo]

Has anyone had any luck with USB to RS232 adapters?

I've been trying to get at least one of the x10 controllers to work on
my laptop but haven't had any luck.  My laptop doesn't have any RS232
ports so I first tried a CM15A which is USB and I know works on my
winXP box.  Unfortunately, X-10 never released the specs so it looks
like everyone gave up when Smarthome came out with their Insteon line
and provided more help.  The last set of drivers I could find were
dated 12/2004 and supported Linux 2.4 and possibly 2.6 but when I
tried it with my 2.6.17 kernel I got warnings and errors which I tried
to resolve but I couldn't get it to work. Either that or the sample
app is broken.

So then I tried a USB/RS232 cable I had lying around.  The system
recognizes it as an HID->COM RS232 Adapter and loads the cypress
driver which creates the /dev/ttyUSB0 device.  Using the latest 2.x
version of heyu (and x10 app for Linux), I get timeouts and errors
when I try it access either the CM11A or CM17A X10 controllers.   If I
try this on my fileserver which actually has a VScom 400H 4 port
serial adapter using /dev/ttyS2 it works fine.  Fails when I try USB.

Now I did get this USB/RS232 adapter several years ago so it's
possible its broken.  I'm pretty sure it was working with a windoze
GPS app but it's been a while plus I may never have gotten around to
trying it via Linux as I had gotten a new GPS receiver that has a USB
port.

So, can anyone recommend a USB/RS232 adapter that they have used with
Linux?  If possible, can they bring it to tonight's meeting so I can
verify it works with x10?  Then I can try and pick one up in time for
my demo next month?  I really don't want to have to lug my fileserver
into the meeting as well as the other gear.

claude