Serial Comm's garbled

[Jaman]

Is anyone able to help, I am fairly new to Arudino programming and am trying to read the Serial output of a device with little luck.
I have been able to read it using a RS232 to USB dongle and PuTTY directly into my PC, with the default settings (9600,8,1,N)

When I attempt to connect the device to a Arduino MEGA (using the same settings), I am getting backwards question marks and other random characters.

I have tried these Examples.

But thought I would take it back to the very basic's till I can get a reasonable output, so I removed all GPIO's except the Rx,Tx and GND and used the following code:

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Serial.println("<Ready>");
}

void loop() {

  if (Serial.available()) {
    Serial.write(Serial.read());
    //delay(1000 * 13 / 960 + 1);
  }
}

I don't have the circuit diagram at the time of posting but I know it is a TTL Serial and the device runs on 6V (4 x 1.5V AA)

[cattledog]

Your image shows connection to pins 16 and 17. That should be Serial2 on the Mega.

[Jaman]

Sorry yes I took the Picture when I had it set up as Serial2, but have since moved them to 0 and 1 to try and simplify the code a little more

[Jaman]

I have also tried a pull up resistor just in case and still have no luck

[sterretje]

Go back to using serial for comms with the computer and another serial port for comms with your device.

Do you have a ttl-to-rs232 converter between the Arduino and the device? From the fact that you mentioned a usb-to-rs232 dongle, the device uses rs242 levels and you will need a converter.