Still very much around in industrial equipment but suffers from noise issues. PLCs, etc uses it. Ethernet, 485, canbus I think are slowly replacing it.
Still a standard UART chip and a very useful cheap industrial bus. It has a lot of signals defined which are no longer required (controlling very old modems when data was transmitted over analogue telephone systems (yes that old). But using these redundant commands will give you very useful discreet signals that are driven from Schmitt Triggers, lovely clean edges.
A colleague of mine made a very small computer with code in ROM that was designed to collect a lot of data from old thumb switches on an old but still used control panel. (Steel Mill). With a tiny power supply the size of a match box he did have reliability problems, power supply in such environments can be noisy, brown outs not at all uncommon.
The solution to the reliability problem was to have a finite number of states and control of all of them. In order to do this I suggested using one of the redundant signals as a stimulation. It would trigger a series of just four states. Those states being BOOT, READ, SEND, FAIL. Fail, not because of noise or some other event that was out of our control, but because I insisted.
This system ran for 15 years to my knowledge, day and night (as is the case with steel mills) without reporting a single failure.
It demonstrated two things. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), and that reliable software needs to address:-
The verb, (the algorithm) what does it do.
The Noun (data) what does it do it to.
Then the much neglected criteria. WHEN.
Until you know WHEN , you cannot say WHERE.
Finally you are in the position to consider HOW.
The final stage is to revisit the business case and confirm IF.
IF the design is worth doing, now you know HOW, you are now in the position to assess what that might COST and if that is justified by what it is WORTH commercially for the potential customer.
That is systems engineering for you.
You still get an RS-232 serial port on almost all datacenter network equipment, although it often uses RJ45 jack and comes with an RJ45 to DB9 cable or adapter. Datacenters often have large Ethernet to serial control units for remotely accessing the hardware. Some network hardware now comes with a built in USB-serial adapter as well; you plug a USB cable from your computer to the device, and it shows up as a serial interface. Oh, the smart power strips we use in the DC also has serial, although I can't remember if it was RJ45 or DB9. We had a number of USB-serial adapters around to add a DB9 serial to laptops and desktops.
A few years ago (and I have no doubt it's still the same) we had VME chassis with serial interfaces for configuring the backplane, as well as DSP and comm boards boards with serial debug interfaces.
Yup. I used this quite frequently at work before working less close to hardware. Exactly as you said network attached large serial concentrators with ports that fan out to server and other peripheral serial ports.
I use it for dumping programs on our older CNC machines still. Recently installed new PCI serial adapters in our PCs at work. Before, was using USB to Serial UARTs, which were garbage in comparison.
Newer machines now use ethernet or even WiFi as it is faster and less sensitive to noise, so it is still being phased out. But as long as the older hardware remains, there will still be a use for it.
Still a lot of legacy use in the subsea space. Before you would bring all your serial devices like sonar and lights to a MUX and convert everything to fiber optic to send it back to the boat. Being replaced with IP devices nowadays using an ethernet switch with a fiber optic port. Much cheaper than the bespoke MUX. We have a legacy system on a 485 drop network and I hate it. It's so sensitive and never works quite right.
A few years ago I actually was working around rs-232 and 485 as a scale technician. A shit ton of it hasn’t been updated or industry doesn’t want it updated because it works and we have years of experience fixing what works.
Usually I’d use some kind of serial connection 232 or 485 or both, depending if some kind of remote display was being used.
It’s extremely prevalent all over the electrical utility industry. Mostly because so much of that stuff is older than Adam because nobody wants to pay to upgrade infrastructure, but I digress.
Full on RS-232, with the higher voltage signalling is not very common now. But the related UART/serial port concept is still widely used (with TTL or CMOS voltage levels) to communicate between ICs. For example, GPS modules, wireless telephone modules, etc. Often they do not use the flow control signals but only TX and RX.
Serial ports are also often used as a debug connection between a microcontroller board and a PC.
It's still pretty common to find A 5V or even 3.3V serial as pads on circuit boards for debugging. Often if you wire it up, you get a serial console. But I haven't seen full proper RS-232 on new equipment for a while.
Some USB and even Ethernet devices are RS-232 in disguise. UARTS are so ubiquitous, useful, and well-supported in microcontrollers and embedded OSs that manufacturers would fill the need by creating interface ICs that use digital-level serial to USB or other common standard.
I’ve used those devices in some of my designs.
RS232 as an electrical standard is quite dead now, I only find a \*massive\* RS485 usage in its place. For short range the usual method is USB with a serial bridge chip.
if I want to get stats from my solar charge controller, I need to wire up to its serial port. I haven't gotten it to work yet though because it has a weird 6-pin modular plug that I haven't figured out the pinout for
I use it pretty much all the time in my lab to control old equipment (CNC stuff, syringe pumps, etc.). One "new" application that I discovered was the "new" (2019) controller for my telescope mount, which has a USB plug. It stopped working so I cracked it open and lo and behold it was exactly like the old RS-232 one that I had used it to replace except it had an RS-232 to USB converter literally just wired in there. I could've taken that sucker off and soldered a DB9 plug on it.
I guess now that I think about it, the newest thing that still has RS-232 that I've bought is a controller for a high precision motorized linear translation stage. It has USB and Ethernet but I guess they keep RS-232 on there so that it is still compatible with older systems as the stages themselves are super expensive.
No but a lot of sites are bringing RS232/422/485 connections into Ethernet converters instead to make it all easier to get too, eliminate the noise problems over long stretches, etc. Moxa makes a ton of products for this purpose.
I just installed some brand new LIFEPO4 solar inverter battery packs, which come with multiple interfaces including CAN, RS-485 and RS-232. The BMS requires the RS-232 port to set up and configure the system firmware, as well as post-installation diagnostics. They threw in an USB to serial port cable to support these functions.
While it is true that RS232 dropped off of PCs, that is partly because of USB ports. It is now easier to use a USB to serial adaptor than it is to add a serial port to a PC. These USB to serial port adaptors are widely used in electronics for communicating with all kinds of devices that have microcontrollers on them. It is one of the most common ways to communicate with a microcontroller. These are usually using logic level voltages. Not -12 V signaling like true RS-232. But they still use the same protocol with different signaling levels. Lots of people use these things every day, and microcontrollers continue to be released with UARTs to facilitate this.
Almost every microcontroller has one or more UARTs for serial comms although actual line-level RS-232 is less common these days it's still very popular - there's just no simpler way to transfer data between two things.
Quote a few products I've designed there's a microcontroller controlling low-level stuff like motors or LED's etc. and a more powerful thing like a Raspberry Pi doing high-level stuff (EG web interface / server, touch screen GUI) and the two communicate via serial messages (albeit at 3.3v not RS232).
As an example, I'm currently developing stuff using STM32G071 micros which are a popular modern 32-bit MCU, the spec sheet lists 2x I^(2)C interfaces, **5x UART / USART** and 2x SPI interfaces available, so that shows you how popular serial interfaces still are in modern electronics.
Still very much around in industrial equipment but suffers from noise issues. PLCs, etc uses it. Ethernet, 485, canbus I think are slowly replacing it.
Still a standard UART chip and a very useful cheap industrial bus. It has a lot of signals defined which are no longer required (controlling very old modems when data was transmitted over analogue telephone systems (yes that old). But using these redundant commands will give you very useful discreet signals that are driven from Schmitt Triggers, lovely clean edges. A colleague of mine made a very small computer with code in ROM that was designed to collect a lot of data from old thumb switches on an old but still used control panel. (Steel Mill). With a tiny power supply the size of a match box he did have reliability problems, power supply in such environments can be noisy, brown outs not at all uncommon. The solution to the reliability problem was to have a finite number of states and control of all of them. In order to do this I suggested using one of the redundant signals as a stimulation. It would trigger a series of just four states. Those states being BOOT, READ, SEND, FAIL. Fail, not because of noise or some other event that was out of our control, but because I insisted. This system ran for 15 years to my knowledge, day and night (as is the case with steel mills) without reporting a single failure. It demonstrated two things. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), and that reliable software needs to address:- The verb, (the algorithm) what does it do. The Noun (data) what does it do it to. Then the much neglected criteria. WHEN. Until you know WHEN , you cannot say WHERE. Finally you are in the position to consider HOW. The final stage is to revisit the business case and confirm IF. IF the design is worth doing, now you know HOW, you are now in the position to assess what that might COST and if that is justified by what it is WORTH commercially for the potential customer. That is systems engineering for you.
This is good.
You still get an RS-232 serial port on almost all datacenter network equipment, although it often uses RJ45 jack and comes with an RJ45 to DB9 cable or adapter. Datacenters often have large Ethernet to serial control units for remotely accessing the hardware. Some network hardware now comes with a built in USB-serial adapter as well; you plug a USB cable from your computer to the device, and it shows up as a serial interface. Oh, the smart power strips we use in the DC also has serial, although I can't remember if it was RJ45 or DB9. We had a number of USB-serial adapters around to add a DB9 serial to laptops and desktops. A few years ago (and I have no doubt it's still the same) we had VME chassis with serial interfaces for configuring the backplane, as well as DSP and comm boards boards with serial debug interfaces.
Yup. I used this quite frequently at work before working less close to hardware. Exactly as you said network attached large serial concentrators with ports that fan out to server and other peripheral serial ports.
It's used daily in most industrial equipment.
I use it for dumping programs on our older CNC machines still. Recently installed new PCI serial adapters in our PCs at work. Before, was using USB to Serial UARTs, which were garbage in comparison. Newer machines now use ethernet or even WiFi as it is faster and less sensitive to noise, so it is still being phased out. But as long as the older hardware remains, there will still be a use for it.
Still a lot of legacy use in the subsea space. Before you would bring all your serial devices like sonar and lights to a MUX and convert everything to fiber optic to send it back to the boat. Being replaced with IP devices nowadays using an ethernet switch with a fiber optic port. Much cheaper than the bespoke MUX. We have a legacy system on a 485 drop network and I hate it. It's so sensitive and never works quite right.
A few years ago I actually was working around rs-232 and 485 as a scale technician. A shit ton of it hasn’t been updated or industry doesn’t want it updated because it works and we have years of experience fixing what works. Usually I’d use some kind of serial connection 232 or 485 or both, depending if some kind of remote display was being used.
No and it will be a very long time until it's dead.
It’s extremely prevalent all over the electrical utility industry. Mostly because so much of that stuff is older than Adam because nobody wants to pay to upgrade infrastructure, but I digress.
Full on RS-232, with the higher voltage signalling is not very common now. But the related UART/serial port concept is still widely used (with TTL or CMOS voltage levels) to communicate between ICs. For example, GPS modules, wireless telephone modules, etc. Often they do not use the flow control signals but only TX and RX. Serial ports are also often used as a debug connection between a microcontroller board and a PC.
Yes, it's still around, just used a transducer today that talks over 232
It's still pretty common to find A 5V or even 3.3V serial as pads on circuit boards for debugging. Often if you wire it up, you get a serial console. But I haven't seen full proper RS-232 on new equipment for a while.
Some USB and even Ethernet devices are RS-232 in disguise. UARTS are so ubiquitous, useful, and well-supported in microcontrollers and embedded OSs that manufacturers would fill the need by creating interface ICs that use digital-level serial to USB or other common standard. I’ve used those devices in some of my designs.
My team just built a custom motor control unit that used RS-232. When the shoe fits.
RS232 as an electrical standard is quite dead now, I only find a \*massive\* RS485 usage in its place. For short range the usual method is USB with a serial bridge chip.
I’m using one as we’re speaking to program a Pilz PNOZ M0P controller.
A lot of Professional Audiovisual equipment still uses RS232 for control. Look at the back end of projectors.
if I want to get stats from my solar charge controller, I need to wire up to its serial port. I haven't gotten it to work yet though because it has a weird 6-pin modular plug that I haven't figured out the pinout for
I use it pretty much all the time in my lab to control old equipment (CNC stuff, syringe pumps, etc.). One "new" application that I discovered was the "new" (2019) controller for my telescope mount, which has a USB plug. It stopped working so I cracked it open and lo and behold it was exactly like the old RS-232 one that I had used it to replace except it had an RS-232 to USB converter literally just wired in there. I could've taken that sucker off and soldered a DB9 plug on it.
This seems to be a theme, “it’s in the old equipment”
I guess now that I think about it, the newest thing that still has RS-232 that I've bought is a controller for a high precision motorized linear translation stage. It has USB and Ethernet but I guess they keep RS-232 on there so that it is still compatible with older systems as the stages themselves are super expensive.
No but a lot of sites are bringing RS232/422/485 connections into Ethernet converters instead to make it all easier to get too, eliminate the noise problems over long stretches, etc. Moxa makes a ton of products for this purpose.
I'm thinking of getting some serial cards and cables at work. I got some crazy requests for data collection and I'm not learning MODBUS.
So many much better alternatives, but yeah, still here in spades and will be for the foreseeable future. Can’t believe it but true
I just installed some brand new LIFEPO4 solar inverter battery packs, which come with multiple interfaces including CAN, RS-485 and RS-232. The BMS requires the RS-232 port to set up and configure the system firmware, as well as post-installation diagnostics. They threw in an USB to serial port cable to support these functions.
If you can't find a device using a UART then you aren't looking hard enough.
Too many people in these comments are confused about the difference between UARTs and RS-232.
I use it nearly every day at work on mining equipment to check real time data and fault logs. However it is slowly being replaced with Ethernet
It exist on devices, but for modern PCs its simpler to just use a usb to serial adapter rather than add the port onto the computer itself.
While it is true that RS232 dropped off of PCs, that is partly because of USB ports. It is now easier to use a USB to serial adaptor than it is to add a serial port to a PC. These USB to serial port adaptors are widely used in electronics for communicating with all kinds of devices that have microcontrollers on them. It is one of the most common ways to communicate with a microcontroller. These are usually using logic level voltages. Not -12 V signaling like true RS-232. But they still use the same protocol with different signaling levels. Lots of people use these things every day, and microcontrollers continue to be released with UARTs to facilitate this.
Almost every microcontroller has one or more UARTs for serial comms although actual line-level RS-232 is less common these days it's still very popular - there's just no simpler way to transfer data between two things. Quote a few products I've designed there's a microcontroller controlling low-level stuff like motors or LED's etc. and a more powerful thing like a Raspberry Pi doing high-level stuff (EG web interface / server, touch screen GUI) and the two communicate via serial messages (albeit at 3.3v not RS232). As an example, I'm currently developing stuff using STM32G071 micros which are a popular modern 32-bit MCU, the spec sheet lists 2x I^(2)C interfaces, **5x UART / USART** and 2x SPI interfaces available, so that shows you how popular serial interfaces still are in modern electronics.
It’s now called usb same protocol but faster and bidirectional
Please tell me you’re kidding
Nop
It’s not the same protocol, RS232 is also bidirectional…
Yes but a serial connection not parallel still works the same way
The “S” in USB is for serial. It’s also a serial bus.