Serial cable
From AlwaysInnovating
Solder a serial cable
The Touch Book already contains a level shifter which can take up to 25V input. You therefore can just solder a serial cable to the Touch Book, without the need of any additional parts. See attached photo:
- P9 - Pin 1: Ground (square pin, towards the middle of the board)
- P9 - Pin 2: Tx (in the middle)
- P9 - Pin 3: Rx (towards the bottom of the board)
More precisely, on the picture:
- Orange cable (P9 - pin 1) is linked to pin 5 (ground) of the serial cable (pin 1 is the top left corner pin of the cable connector).
- Brown cable (P9 - pin 2) is linked to pin 3 (Tx) of the serial cable.
- White cable (P9 - pin 3) is linked to pin 2 (Rx) of the serial cable.
The settings required for the terminal program are 115200 8N1.
Connect to the Touch Book
To get a console on your PC, you need to connect the serial cable through a null modem to your PC.
PC (Linux or Windows or Mac) with a USB connector <=> USB to serial cable <=> null modem <=> custom cable <=> Touch Book
On Windows, Mac, or Linux, you can use minicom to access the console. Install minicom on your machine, follow these steps in a Terminal as root:
- Setup your connection:
minicom -s
- Chose "Serial port setup" and enter "/dev/ttyUSB0" (considering you don't have any other serial cable connected):
- Once done, chose "Exit" in the main menu. It will launch the modem connection:
- After a few seconds, you should be able to access to a shell on your Touch Book:
Minicom has many options and functionalities; refer to the manpage and type Ctrl-A Z while running minicom.
