[OT] Serial Input Question

[Rick Stevens]

On 06/23/2010 10:26 AM, Thom Paine wrote:
> I'm posting this to the list because I am hoping I can do this in linux not
> only for free, but also with greater functionality.
>
> I am looking at this software http://www.taltech.com/products/comfile.html to
> be able to read data off a serial input.
>
> I have a printer in my comm center that tracks our 911 calls. We are
> currently spewing the data to tractor fed paper and while not only jamming,
> it sometimes runs out of paper and people don't notice it for a while.
>
> I'd like to be able to read this data from the RS232 port, and have it write
> to a file. I'd like to be able to archive the data based on dates. I'm sure
> I can do this with cron.
>
> Is anyone else on the list capturing RS232 data, and logging it?

Uh, if you have the serial port initialized correctly (for example,
by use of "stty"), then something like:

	tail -f /dev/ttyS0 >/var/log/logfile

should work.  If you want to background that, then

	nohup tail -f /dev/ttyS0 >/var/log/logfile &

Never tried it, though.  In theory it'd work.  See "man stty" for
details on setting the serial port parameters.
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