Testing direct serial connections to temperature sensors

If a Papouch TM digital temperature sensor is connected to the control center using a serial cable from the sensor port to a COM port of the control center computer which runs Trimble 4D Control Server, serial communication is established.

You should test the correct operation of the serial communication using the following steps:

1. Connect a computer, for example, a notebook computer, to each end of the serial cable. In order to connect two computers via a serial cable, use a null modem adapter, which twists the Transmit and Receive-lines of the serial cable. Then run a terminal program (for example, HyperTerminal) on each of the computers. Make sure that the keyboard input on both sides is correctly displayed on the other end of the line.

   Tip – Very useful for testing a serial line is a “serial quick-tester”, a serial adapter, which displays the status of the serial lines and also allows switching the wire-connections via DIP switches. You can use this adapter to easily establish a serial line connection between two computers without a null-modem adapter. If you don't know how the serial cable is wired, you can experiment with the quick-tester until you have a correct connection between the two terminal programs.

2. Now connect the serial cable of the temperature sensor to the control center and start a terminal program. It should now be possible to see the temperature output of the sensor in the terminal program.
3. Now that you have made sure that the serial communication works correctly you can add a Temperature Sensor module for this device to Trimble 4D Control Server and check if it recognizes the sensor correctly and if the sensor starts to send measurements to the control center.