Serial to TCPIP – Multi clients [Linux]

Two weeks ago, i needed to find a way to send/receive serial data over ethernet using TCP/IP protocol, with multi clients support under Linux. All clients can send datas to the serial port, and data from the serial port are send to every clients.

In my investigation i found a lot of softwares (socat, ser2net, …) which permit that, but most of them are limited to one client, except the famous netcat !

First install it:

sudo apt-get install netcat

Configure the serial port (8 databits, 115200 bps, no parity, 1 stopbits):

stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 cs8 115200 -parenb -cstopb

Launch ncat (listen on port 8060):

ncat --listen --keep-open --source-port 8060 < /dev/ttyUSB0 > /dev/ttyUSB0

That’s all ! You can test your serial port to tcpip gateway by using any tcp clients, like netcat or Hercules (HW-group).

Extra: If you want to dump transiting data, into a file, just add -output file.log or -hex-dump file.log if you want data in hexadecimal.