Comfoolery and Serial Port Sharing

Questions about the operation or expectations of the NetStumbler software

Comfoolery and Serial Port Sharing

Postby variable » Wed Apr 16, 2003 8:53 am

Just a little note before I ask... I started this thread because the other related thread became a HAM thread (not that I'm against HAM just wanting a little more specific help) That being said...

As I have discovered, one can use Comfoolery and the Devicecomm manager to share a port. Here's where my problem begins...

I've got a Dell inspiron 8200 with Mappoint 2002 (AGPS) and Netstumbler and a Magellen GPS 315. I want to use mappoint and netsumbler at the same time and figured why the heck not? It's not like they're talking to the GPS, just listening. Well, this was sort of a naieve thought which I soon realized when It told me that the port was in use. Moving on...

When I use Devcomm and comfoolery, netstumbler will time out with the gps every other second. Every second in between that it grabs the data. Kinda like device comm is switching back and forth. I thought this might have to do with the timeout settings in devcomm and changed them all from 1000 to 1 and acommplished nothing. Furthermore, out of pure curiosity, I pulled up mappoint and opened the AGPS tool and it gave me a runtime error. Am I missing something?
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Postby gmiller220 » Wed Apr 16, 2003 9:07 am

Have you checked out this script?
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Postby variable » Wed Apr 16, 2003 3:32 pm

yes. no werke.
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Postby variable » Wed Apr 16, 2003 3:34 pm

it looks like I need GPS Plus but there's 2 GPS plus type spiels and they both have broken download links. I think it's trialware but I'm not going to shell out $50 for the 2 of them just to try it. Anyone have any copies of the trial/know which one I need?
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Postby top10consulting » Wed Apr 16, 2003 4:30 pm

I had very similar prolems with comfoolery... dled this program, and it worked immediately. I did have to declare the virtual port used by the map program as the master.. but NS worked perfectly. 10 minutes later I bought it..

http://www.mks.zp.ua/splitter.php -- Eltima Serial Splitter.

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Postby variable » Wed Apr 16, 2003 4:42 pm

yes but if I go that route, I don't get live updates of NS on MapPoint. I like the idea of live updates on MP. I don't understand what has to be so complicated about it. A script takes info from NS and a script from MP reads from that script. Then again, I don't program so I'm sure I'm oversimplifiying...
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Try TrackNS

Postby RedRocket » Wed Apr 16, 2003 6:17 pm

I'm using RogerRabbit's TrackNS script (see the scripting forum). It will open MapPoint, zoom in, and plot a breadcrumb trail on the map. No real-time AP plotting, but that is because the NS scripting does not get that detail of information.

I also had problems with comfoolery, although I like the idea. If you up the timeout in devicecomm manager to 1000ms, the timeouts go away (mostly). However, there are unexplained stoppages of the GPS dataflow. Since Brian Poe is only doing the host app, there may be problem in the server side that we would never see fixed.
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Postby gmiller220 » Wed Apr 16, 2003 6:52 pm

Originally posted by variable
yes. no werke.


What doesn't work? Does it just not pass anything? I installed it and it worked right away. It did not track where I had been (didn't look to see if I could configure anything either) but it did show me where I was. I'm gonna try trackns next time out.
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Postby top10consulting » Wed Apr 16, 2003 9:01 pm

Originally posted by variable
yes but if I go that route, I don't get live updates of NS on MapPoint. I like the idea of live updates on MP.


I can't speak about MapPoint, I have MapSend from Magellan, it does live updates, with bread crumbs.. and works great -- using the Serial Splitter. They have a demo that you can test first with.
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Postby agentgrn » Wed Apr 16, 2003 10:26 pm

The problem is actually with the DeviceComm serial driver...not Comfoolery, actually. MP doesn't like the way the software implentation is executed with that program is does not work well for an extended period of time. This also holds true for some USB serial ports.

Your best bet would be to add a USB serial port, and just split the signal and give MP a good hardware port. There are some other software programs out there which do the same thing as the CF/DCOM package, but I haven't taken much time to experiment, admittedly.
-A.G.-
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Postby Madhadder » Fri Dec 05, 2003 4:44 am

Just DL'd the Comfoolery & Lantronix program...

It looks like lantronix have updated their prog. and given it
a new name. Unfortunatly I have not been able to get it to
work with comfoolery. Does anybody have the old version
they can send me?

Are there any commerical products that will also mirror com port
data to another "Vitural" port?
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Postby nashr » Thu Feb 19, 2004 7:37 am

Yes, I just started looking into this as well. I think the original Lantronix proggy was a free utility, so if anyone has it and could post it here that would be very helpful. Thanks!

Update: I found it posted elsewhere here in the forums. There is a direct link to DeviceComm Manager.

Good luck all.
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