Serial communication is everywhere — industrial machines, sensors, controllers, access systems, embedded devices, and legacy hardware still powering critical infrastructure. The Serial Bus Connector makes it incredibly easy to interact with RS232 and RS485 serial ports inside your workflows, enabling real-time automation through reading and writing raw serial data.
With the Serial Bus Connector, you can communicate with devices over COM / ttyUSB ports, send commands, read responses, handle framing, control RTS direction for RS485, and seamlessly integrate serial hardware into your automation pipelines.
Step 1: Connect to Your Serial Device
Most serial devices expose a COM port on Windows or a ttyUSB/ttyACM port on Linux. Simply drag a Serial Request node onto the canvas and configure:
- Port — COM3, COM4, /dev/ttyUSB0, /dev/ttyACM0
- Interface — RS232 or RS485
- Operation — Read or Write
- Baud Rate — 1200 to 115200
- Parity — None, Even, Odd
- Data Bits — 7 or 8
- Stop Bits — 1 or 2
The connector handles serial port creation, opening, closing, timeouts, and RTS direction automatically.
Step 2: Read from a Serial Device
Use the Serial Request node in read mode to capture data from your device. Supported read modes:
- line — read until newline
- all — read all available bytes
- bytes — read a fixed number of bytes
The node returns:
- data — decoded text or hex
- hex — raw bytes in hex format
- port — serial port used
- interface — RS232 or RS485
- readAt — timestamp
This is ideal for reading sensor values, device responses, machine status messages, or binary protocols.
Step 3: Write to a Serial Device
If you want your workflow to send commands — Modbus frames, ASCII commands, hex payloads, or device instructions — use the write operation.
You can specify:
- writeData — text or hex payload
- payloadEncoding — UTF‑8, ASCII, or HEX
- preTransmitMs — delay before sending (RS485)
- postTransmitMs — delay after sending (RS485)
- rtsDirection — auto or none
The node returns:
- bytesWritten — number of bytes sent
- hex — hex representation of the payload
- writtenAt — timestamp
This is perfect for controlling actuators, sending commands to PLC modules, interacting with embedded boards, or writing binary frames.
Step 4: Serial Automation Use Cases
Once serial data enters your workflow, you can combine it with any other connector:
- Parse binary or ASCII protocols
- Trigger alerts via Slack or Telegram
- Store readings in Google Sheets or databases
- Send HTTP requests to cloud dashboards
- Control downstream devices based on serial input
Serial communication becomes a powerful entry point into your automation ecosystem.
Step 5: Build Real Serial Automations
You can build advanced serial-driven workflows:
- Read sensor data from RS232 devices
- Send commands to RS485 bus modules
- Integrate legacy industrial hardware
- Automate serial-based access control systems
- Process binary frames from embedded controllers
Serial communication becomes reliable, flexible, and fully automated.
What's Next?
Experiment with multi-step workflows, combine serial reads with conditional logic, or build real-time dashboards showing device activity. The Serial Bus Connector gives you the tools to automate any RS232/RS485-driven process.