Data acquisition from serial port

Other Hardware Science and Measurement
1

Hi,

I am completely new to the whole Arduino thing, so any help will be appriated.

I have some old washing machines that print its status (e.g. temperature, pressure and time) to its data printer (connected via RS232 DB25) every 4s or so. However, I wanted to capture these data in soft copies, so I no longer have to keep the hard copies on file. The problem is I have 4 machines, but one PC only, which is why I am thinking about using Arduino per machine to capture data onto its onboard memory before uploading it to the PC. Pretty much like a virtual printer for these machines.

Like I said I am only new to Arduino, so I am not sure if this is do-able? If so do I need anything else other than Arduino Duemilanove?
I found a device called Moxa NPort DE211, which is like a serial device server that forward data (serial -> Ethernet), which would be useful if I could somehow have the one PC listens to all machines... but I don't think it is possible.

Thank you,
J

2

I think it will be much cheaper if you just got four RS232 to USB cables for your PC.

Yes you can do it with an arduino but you have to have a RS232 to TTL voltage converter for each machine.