I am working with a stepper driver that has advanced functions which can be used only over a 2 wire RS232 serial interface. The wiring diagram on the stepper driver shows Rx Tx and Gnd which I wired according to the Uno ports 0, 1 and Gnd. The driver should respond and acknowledge ASCII codes on the serial port but I am getting no response or acknowledgement. Does anyone know if it is possible to talk on a 2 wire RS232 network or if there is any homebrew RS232 interface? The driver is a Mach Motion Products UIM24108T-M-S http://machmo.com/stepperdrivers/pdfs/UIM241Manual.pdf. Thanks!
No, RS-232 serial voltage levels are not compatible with the arduino serial pins which use TTL voltage levels. In fact it's easy to damage the arduino board by applying rs-232 voltages to it directly. What you require is a voltage and logic inverter converter that will correctly translate from the two different voltage standards.
Here is but one example below, many others are out there and many home-brew there own converters using a max232 type chip.
Thanks, I ordered the version sans-DB9 connector yesterday for this. Looks pretty straight forward. Appreciate the help!