I am a research student at Arizona State University and my lab is currently working on a "Switching unit" (which will be part of a water-testing device we are currently developing), composed of a Valco Multiposition Valve and an Arduino Uno micro-controller.
Essentially, we are having trouble with finding out the right command to use which will send a string to the multiposition valve (for example: the string "GO11" will tell device to switch to valve 11).
To connect the arduino with the multiposition valve, we have bought an RS232 shield for the arduino (since the multiposition valve uses a serial connection).
Sadly, none of us are very experienced in programming. So it would be awesome if you could help!
Note: We were able to use LabView's VISA to set up a connection with the multiposition valve. And using VISA's "write", we were able to send a string to the valve and the valve would switch to the corresponding position we wanted. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with the multiposition valve.
OK...what kind of RS232 is it -- logic-level or +/-10V stuff? Which RS232 shield do you have? Also a link to the datasheet of your valve would be useful.
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The Gadget Shield: accelerometer, RGB LED, IR transmit/receive, light sensor, potentiometers, pushbuttons
The serial examples given for hyperterminal and such have an at the end of the character string, which appends a carrage return/line feed to the end of the string. I would think Serial.println("GO11"); you have in your code would do the same. If the valve works with a regular pc serial port, then there maybe an issue with the rs232 shield or its connections.