windowsmockingserial-porthardware-interfacevirtual-serial-port

Faking an RS232 Serial Port

I'm developing a project that has a number of hardware sensors connecting to the deployment machine through RS232 serial ports.

But ... I'm developing on a machine without an physical RS232 serial ports, but I would like to make fake serial ports that I can connect to and output data from with the aim of faking input from hardware sensors.

Does anyone know of a way to create a fake serial port and control it on Windows XP?

Solution

  • If you are developing for Windows, the com0com project might be, what you are looking for.

    It provides pairs of virtual COM ports that are linked via a nullmodem connetion. You can then use your favorite terminal application or whatever you like to send data to one COM port and recieve from the other one.

    EDIT:

    As Thomas pointed out the project lacks of a signed driver, which is especially problematic on certain Windows version (e.g. Windows 7 x64).

    There are a couple of unofficial com0com versions around that do contain a signed driver. One recent verion (3.0.0.0) can be downloaded e.g. from here.