Old Serial Smart Boards

[mitchell1981]

Does anyone have any experience buying adaptors for Serial (RS232) smart boards?

 

I need to get these working on laptops that only have a USB port.

 

Does anyone know if I can get away with buying a cheap adapter such as this one:

 

Cheap Adapter

 

or do I have to buy the official Smart adapter which costs a ridiculous £40!

 

Official Smart Adapter

 

I'm sure other people must have had this problem, as no laptops come with serial ports these days.

 

Thanks.

[cheesypete]

I cant see why the cheap one wouldnt work - we've got a couple of devices from Keyspan which work fine but are of similar price to the official one

 

Keyspan device

[timbo343]

The science dept here have something called sensing science which uses a R232 cable. I did a few tests with cheaper R232 to usb cables and found that they didnt work so had to buy the £25 version from the sensing science suppliers. I got told that if you find a R232 cable with ALL the pins connected then it will work, but the cheaper cables this sometimes isnt the case.

[Guest richard]

Have used the Keyspan adaptor with Promethean boards with no problems but the cheaper ones don't always work.

[rdarch]

We have just been through the same situation. We tried numerous converters but to no avail. Bit the bullet and bought the smart cable and everything works now

[CheeseDog]

Had some adaptors about 4 years back for exactly the same purpose.

 

Not using USB 2 with those laptops in fairness but there was a considerable delay (at least .5 of a second) between touching the board and getting a response.

 

Got some proper Smart USB leads in the end and they worked fine.Plus the added bonus of not messing about with drivers for the adaptor.

 

More expensive I know but the adpaters in this case were a false economy

[plexer]

Mitchell: I have a cheap prolific chip usb converter you can have to try if you want just pay me the postage.

 

Cheers,

 

Ben

[plexer]

Promethean supply the keyspan ones annoyingly if you specified usb connection for the board they would actually install the serial connection as it plugs into the becta box and then give you a usb to serial converter.

 

To me this is unacceptable because the boards have usb native on them so I always instruct the engineer to plug in the proper usb cable, you can have both plugged into the board at the same time but you can only use them one at a time.

 

We had this issue over correct adapters with the science data loggers we tried 2 different usb converters and in the end bought the £26 ones from the company that work.

 

Ben

[StuartC]

I think (don't hold me to this) that if you had an install on the BECTA spec then we had to use serial, but those installs aren't done anymore. we now try to keep USB to 5m where possible, if you want a longer distance then it's a possible extender cable or a serial cable with a keyspan.

[starscream]

I think with the promethean adapters (keyspan) you need the expensive ones because the adapter is powered. Non-powered serial to usb adapters don't work.

 

I didn't realise you could use non-SMART serial to USB adapters with smartboards?