USB input to Serial/COM port - how to?

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Thuleman

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I have a piece of software that expects to read GPS data from a serial port.
The laptop running Windows XP only has USB ports. The GPS unit only has a USB port. Is there any way to use a virtual serial port such that I can connect the GPS to the USB port and have the OS think it's a COM port?
 
Yea, i got one off ebay awhile back. Usb to com1/lpt1 port. Works good. From inside windows it looks like if it were just a regular com port. Just gotta make sure the drivers work with the OS your using. ;)
 
I need it the other way around though, I need to connect a mini-USB to the PC's USB port, and that connection needs to look like a serial one to the PC. No physical RS232 connector is involved, the physical connectors are USB(A) and miniUSB(B). It's got to be a software solution that somehow transfers the USB signal into a signal that's then send to a virtual COM port.
 
Thuleman said:
That's exactly what I need. "Virtual COM port (VCP) drivers cause the USB device to appear as an additional COM port available to the PC. Application software can access the USB device in the same way as it would access a standard COM port."

Sadly the link above only works for FTDI parts.
Click to expand...

Duh, sorry about that it say that is nice red letters! But I wonder if it would still work or if the driver is tied to that hardware. If you find something please post back as I would be intrested in seeing what you find.

Good luck!
 
There's a way to use device manager or something in the os, to set your USB serial connector onto com port 1-3 so that it can connect to legacy hardware. We talked about it here before but I can't remember the details. Maybe it was a bios setting ... man..
 
Turns out Franson made just what I was looking for; GPSGate.
That software will allow me to connect my GPS to the laptop via USB port, but it will then create a virtual com port to "export" the GPS data to such that it can be read by my other application. Done and done, thanks!
 
Almost all USB GPS modules create a virtual serial port for their operation, as this is the standard way to interface them (NMEA 0183).
 
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