Mar
8
RS-232 and You
Filed Under Equipment Cables
Everyone likes the assurance that they’ve bought the best, right, appropriate, etc., product and from time to even those in the know run across something unfamiliar or unknown. RS-232 connections and or connectors may fall into that very category. By now we’re all pretty much familiar with analog audio and video connections, component video, HDMI, and digital audio connections but what about RS-232 serial connections?
The first thing you should know about RS-232 is that well, unless you have an advanced control system, ala Crestron, AMX, Control-4 or alike you probably don’t need to worry about the protocol at all. RS-232 connections are for control systems (above) that can take advantage of direct serial control and or two-way serial control, this type of serial control is far from the norm for consumer electronics.
Direct serial control differs from infra-red (IR) in that a hardwired connection (in the form of a RS-232 cable or similar) is used to connect the control system and other devices together directly. In essence the “controller” can give the connected devices commands directly, eschewing less accurate control protocols like radio-frequency and infra-red altogether.
In addition to this, 2-way RS-232 capable devices can actually send information back to the controller, things like, command received, current on/off state and now playing meta data. Again, RS-232 is nice if you can take advantage of it but far from necessary for reliable control or a single system.
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