How To Connect to the TonidoPlug2 Serial Port

I wanted to connect to the serial plug on my TonidoPlug2. Here’s how I did it.

First I bought a usb to rs323 cable

Here’s the layout for the plug (top being where the power connection is):

VCC (red)
RX (green)
TX (white)
GND (black)
    

To connect from Windows, I used HyperTerminal on an old Windows XP laptop I had (115200 baud rate) - it connected without a hitch (I don't think that the latest version of Windows has HyperTerminal, so you may have to hunt around for a different terminal emulator, here's a page on using PuTTY as a terminal emulator).

For Mac OSX I had to install a driver from here (note that it required me to manually mount the dmg for some reason before I could install the app) and once the driver was installed, I checked what the device name was:

ls -l /dev/tty*
    

Then I used screen to connect to it:

screen /dev/tty.NoZAP-PL2303-000012FA 115200
    

(to exit, either open another terminal window and kill the screen task, or type ctrl-a followed by ctrl-\