macbeth TR924 and link to PC via RS 232

[BEV]

I have an old but very servicable TR924 densitometer which I use for film testing. I have seen posts that say it can be linked to a PC to upload the readings via the RS 232 connection. All 900 series Macbeths can do this, and it has a label on the RS 232 refering to the kodak technet centre. The manual says " The RS-232-C is asynchrononous at a rate of 300 baud, one start bit, and one stop bit, with 7 data bits, and no parity..." Does any one know what hardware and software is needed to upload the data into a spreadsheet like excel? It's a pain to write the densities down, then type them in to the PC, without allowing for typos etc.
Thanks
Richard

[koraks]

Any terminal program that allows copy-pasting. Back in the day a little program named Hyperterminal came with windows standard, I'm sure you can download it still, or even fancier alternatives.

[onnect17]

I have an old but very servicable TR924 densitometer which I use for film testing. I have seen posts that say it can be linked to a PC to upload the readings via the RS 232 connection. All 900 series Macbeths can do this, and it has a label on the RS 232 refering to the kodak technet centre. The manual says " The RS-232-C is asynchrononous at a rate of 300 baud, one start bit, and one stop bit, with 7 data bits, and no parity..." Does any one know what hardware and software is needed to upload the data into a spreadsheet like excel? It's a pain to write the densities down, then type them in to the PC, without allowing for typos etc.
Thanks
Richard

Could you post an image of the back of the device showing the serial port?

[jonathanmckee]

I have an old but very servicable TR924 densitometer which I use for film testing. I have seen posts that say it can be linked to a PC to upload the readings via the RS 232 connection. All 900 series Macbeths can do this, and it has a label on the RS 232 refering to the kodak technet centre. The manual says " The RS-232-C is asynchrononous at a rate of 300 baud, one start bit, and one stop bit, with 7 data bits, and no parity..." Does any one know what hardware and software is needed to upload the data into a spreadsheet like excel? It's a pain to write the densities down, then type them in to the PC, without allowing for typos etc.
Thanks
Richard
I'm sure you can download it still, or even fancier alternatives.

http://hautavis.net/116/o.png

[Robert Brazile]

I'd venture to guess that you'd need a USB-RS-232 cable or adapter to enable you to connect it to anything modern (Google will produce links to many). Once you had that, something as simple as Terminal (on Mac OS) or one of the freeware terminal programs available for Windows, to be able to read the data once you figured out the device name on your OS. If you're on something Unix-derived (such as Mac OS) you could probably even write a script to read from the serial device (e.g., via cat), pipe the results through something like awk, and write the results to a comma-delimited file that your favorite spreadsheet could import.

Robert

[BEV]

Could you post an image of the back of the device showing the serial port?

onnect17

I have opened the TR 903 and two photos show the wiring, and general layout of the interior!
Viewed from the front and numbered from the right the wire colours and pin connections are:-
1 green pin 1
2 orange pin 2
3 grey pin 5
4 black pin 7
5 red pin 20
6 blue pin 6

144721144722

I made up a connector from Maplins (0.1" PCB latch housing 10 way FY94C), using 6 core wire, for the TR924. 144723

I am going to try male to male 25 pin connector to computer serial port, and hyperterminal as suggested by Koraks. It's a windows accessory to XP, but not in Win 9 and 10, which I still have. Will let you know if it works.

[onnect17]

BEV,
You will need access to the TX and GND signals, as a minimum (pins 2 and 7 on a DB25 connector). Having RX also is not a bad idea but I do not see the pin 3 listed in your post.

I use Teraterm on Windows platforms as the terminal app.
Check this link --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tera_Term

In any case, you should also consider some xrites in the 88X and 89X series often listed in the auction site. For $30 or $40 bucks the whole densities reading process is automated.