The Humble RS232 Connector: A Reliability Standard in the Age of USB

As we gaze upon the sleek, modern devices that surround us today, it's easy to take for granted the humble components that keep them ticking. One such component, often overlooked but always reliable, is the RS232 connector. Also known as a serial data port, this old-school technology has been around for decades and still holds its own in the world of manufacturing and testing.

A Brief History of Legacy Machines

The RS232 connector was widely used in the early days of computing and industrial control systems. It's no surprise that many factories from decades past still rely on these connectors to test and calibrate their equipment. With the advent of newer technologies like USB, it might seem like these legacy machines are relics of a bygone era. However, as we'll see, the RS232 connector remains a tried-and-true workhorse in the world of manufacturing.

The Importance of Reliability

So why do manufacturers still use RS232 connectors? The answer lies in their reliability. Unlike newer technologies that can be finicky and prone to errors, RS232 connectors are rock-solid dependable. They're designed to withstand the rigors of industrial use and provide a stable connection for data transfer. In an age where crosstalk and other issues can plague digital signals, the simplicity and robustness of RS232 make it an attractive choice for industries that demand precision.

A Glimpse into the Future

As we explore the inner workings of these factories, we catch a glimpse of the future. Modern manufacturing relies on complex software and sophisticated testing equipment to ensure product quality. The use of tools like computer-controlled test stands and advanced data analysis packages has revolutionized the industry, enabling manufacturers to produce high-quality products with ease.

A Tour of the Factory Floor

As we make our way through the factory floor, we see a world of complexity and activity. Fans spin, motors whir, and machines hum along, all driven by a intricate system of pressure sensors, fans, and other components. It's clear that this is no ordinary manufacturing facility, but rather a hub of innovation and expertise.

Block Diagrams and Pressure Sensors

One of the most interesting features of this factory is its use of block diagrams to illustrate how different components work together. These detailed diagrams provide a glimpse into the complex system at play, with pressure sensors monitoring airflow and fan mounts directing airflow to specific areas. It's clear that the engineers behind this project have a deep understanding of the intricacies of industrial control systems.

A Counter Blower in Action

As we take a closer look at one of the test stations, we see a counter blower doing its thing. This clever device uses airflow to clean and calibrate the system, ensuring that everything runs smoothly and efficiently. It's just another example of how manufacturers are pushing the boundaries of what's possible with industrial technology.

The Role of Training in Adoption

As we learn more about this project, it becomes clear that training will be a crucial component of its success. The team behind this initiative recognizes that adopting new technologies requires patience, dedication, and a willingness to learn. With their focus on methodical learning and collaboration with industry experts, they're setting themselves up for success in the complex world of manufacturing.

A Peek at the Software

As we examine the software being used to control these machines, it's clear that this is no ordinary application. The team has developed sophisticated tools to analyze data and optimize performance, ensuring that every fan produces maximum airflow with minimal energy consumption. It's a testament to the power of innovation and collaboration in driving progress.

The Importance of Industry Standards

Finally, we take a look at the standards being used in this industry. With companies like IBM and others establishing their own protocols for testing and calibrating equipment, it's clear that there's room for improvement when it comes to standardization. By adopting industry-recognized standards like those used by manufacturers, we can ensure greater consistency and accuracy in our results.

A Final Look at the Air Compressor

As we wrap up our tour of the factory floor, we take a final look at the air compressor that drives this operation. With its quiet operation and precise control, it's clear that this machine is designed to deliver exceptional performance under pressure.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the humble RS232 connector may seem old-fashioned compared to newer technologies like USB. However, its reliability and simplicity make it an attractive choice for industries that demand precision and accuracy. By embracing legacy technology and adopting new approaches to testing and calibration, manufacturers can drive innovation and excellence in their products. As we look to the future of industrial control systems, one thing is clear: the RS232 connector will remain a trusted workhorse in the world of manufacturing for years to come.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enif something bad happens it's going to go off the side or it's going to run away just let it go everybody step away from it you got it it's not worth it hey everyone we don't do unboxing videos i think they're pointless drivel and they're a waste of time today we are unboxing this thing this is a fan tester uh this one's special that's the only reason we're unboxing it so i'm gonna be joined by patrick stone from the team we are going to be opening this thing this is our biggest investment we've done in testing hardware it's for testing computer fans and the goal is to produce some real hard data uh and finally start to be able to validate manufacturer claims with their own damn equipment this is what a lot of them use so i hope no one's lying out there stone do you think anyone's lying probably we're sponsoring our own video to help pay for this huge machine and commemorate a major milestone we designed this brand new red and black hud themed mouse map that's in stock and shipping now on store.gamersexes.net this special launch features a vibrant red and black design on the desk sized mouse mat delivering one of your most requested color combinations the design represents a heads up display with a tech slant and we've carefully color matched the stitched red border with a bright red while also offering anti-free resilience for long-term use our focus is on high quality so the mouse mats have a custom bright red rubber underside that we had to hunt down and tune specifically making this one of the most uniquely designed mouse mats on the market we're even signing and numbering 50 of them and mixing them in randomly into orders placed over the next seven days as a bonus too we just restocked our large bolt anti-static mod maps for pc building and they're in stock and shipping now you can grab all of these and more on store.camerasnexus.net while supporting our ability to provide in-depth testing and getting yourself something nice in return okay so uh this fan tester we talked about this a while ago but we've got a strategy i'll explain in a second here we'll see how it goes um the fan tester was a huge expense this is basically it'll do pq curves so it'll do pressure it'll do flow uh and it'll test all kinds of fan sizes so we can do 120 up to 2 something to 10 to 20. we'll see when i open it it was custom built it is uh certified and different methodologies we'll go over in the future and the equipment itself cost was like i think after all the customizations we did came out to about 46 48k uh us dollars shipping was like 10. so we're we're approaching 60 grand in this thing and um really excited to use it i said previously i don't know that we're gonna get roi on this anytime soon but i wanted it and i think it'll be fun to test with so i was willing to take a potential loss short term to be able to produce some unique and detailed data that no one else in reviews media is even capable of producing so that's what we're going to do ain't no one else doing this as we always say internally so now we're going to start saying it externally because we can really back it up with this all right i think the entire thing with the wood is like 1600 or 1800 pounds oh we don't need this then you lift no oh i left cpus this thing is intended to be opened up with a forklift which we there's no we can't really do that here like for many reasons he had an idea of maybe we're being very careful and cautious here we thought it through but we're gonna try and prop it up see if we can slide the pallet out that might not be possible if not we're gonna pull all the nails we're gonna open it up and then we'll figure out what to do i might have to contract someone to bring in a forklift for a couple hours and do the rest but um the forklift is needed because we have to get the fantastic off of the pallet once we get the box open we can't damage it yeah it's a thing that would suck that would really suck can we wheel each other around on this and have fun for a little while sure okay andrew hop on uh i think we just got to get all the corners off andrew you have safety glasses on oh yeah he's more safe than us oh yeah this is an air compressor this is required for the fantastic does it smell like like a burning smell i'm getting like a burning smell from pulling the nails out i guess it's high friction maybe a small copper i don't know maybe is that what it is ready to go to the top how free is it we're always free in america how free is it bald eagles gonna lift and bring it to your left my left your right yeah okay nice ooh can we make a torture chamber out of this look at that uh yeah oh no you could dodge if you're a person never mind not as cool got it it's like an old freaky dude may flower as i say i wonder if you might be able to roll it out but this might be a good time to consider our options not gonna be able to stop it if it's too steep of a ramp yep so we can maybe get on the pallet jack and move it back more make a longer ramp so it can naturally with us kind of providing some resistance from not behind it where we'll get run over i kind of like that so uh we could take the other side off and then stack it on top of this one assuming those casters turn sideways i'm a little worried about tipping the these two that we can see clearly do okay like this long way swing it out yeah okay yeah i guess we can take the walls off now i'm gonna lift this up if you want to slide that under you thinking we go yeah just all the way up actually that one might be bigger let's use that one first that wall yeah and then we'll put one of these small ones on top of this one i'm ready let's see how it stacks it's probably going to be too much but we'll see what happens the manufacturer is going to watch this and be like we're not warranty in that device oh wait that's not bad at all that's actually pretty good i think our biggest risk here is going to be rolling off the side so as long as we control be okay yep i would like mike and for the muscle but maybe get three other people to equal him how does this feel both of us on i don't think it's gonna break i want at the bottom these two to be connected this and the one below it at the top this connected at least three points to the this one is that like the dolphin from spongebob no plan for this is we're gonna try and swing this long ways and wheel it down this way this is our emergency stop so if we can't get control of it if it starts running away we'll angle it to this if something bad happens it's going to go off the side or it's going to run away just let it go everybody step away from it you got it it's not worth it okay and we'll we're going to be really slow on this so a lot of communication and if someone says stop then everybody hold it in place that should be that should be mostly it i think yeah so if you can put some pressure right there steve uh andrew you're probably gonna be better off on this side as well because there's not going to be much on that side you will be our safety for hey we're too close to the edge i think he's kind of helping steer too exactly right and then keegan from that position can you so you want me to support in here yeah that way if it gets out there do you have a tip in yeah i think we're okay with portfolio all right so let's go slow we're good right now andrew good on that side stone you feel okay good so far all right i'm just here keep it coming nice and easy was that just coming off it is yep okay sounded scary yeah punctured okay so let's figure that out i want to push back hang on hang on yeah leverage oh good idea you want tell me if you want more get two more hang on yeah so i'm gonna go up one more so what i'm going to do is i'm going to stand on this which should be enough to lift it out of that hole and it should be able to roll forward it's going to push weight on keegan's side did you punch through on that side keegan or no okay just trying to do just enough clear all right all right now let's try and just keep it moving nice and steady there's a hole in the back yeah yeah we should be able to get that so actually you two guys if you can push steve and i can steer and guy okay one two three keep it coming we're good keep it coming keep it coming looking great and done perfect good engineering stone nice work nice work okay so we got it off thin let me show you a couple things over here so overall went extremely well having four people to two to basically be the steering and two to be the resistance worked out great we had the wheel punch through here but because of all of the boards underneath it it was caught no problem another one punched through over there and uh fortunately just because of all this reinforcement down here that was the extent of the issue and then we just mostly stone levered it up on one side and then we used momentum to get it out of the other crater so no big deal worked out really well uh this is the fan tester i'm gonna actually open it now this is the only unboxing video you're ever going to get on our channel there might have been one nine years ago if there was i'm gonna set it to private and then this will be the only one on the channel i'm serious i will say it's private if anyone links it it's going away and the um other than that i guess we'll do another one when we get another machine in but that's going to be the only thing we unbox this scientific equipment because it's cool so fancy sound the display this is powerful enough to produce extremely bad data with extremely high confidence is how an engineer describes it to me so um so we're going to learn how to use it that's going to take us a few months these look like clamps i'm thinking this is maybe just was to hold them in shipping yeah that's about right yeah that's just to support it yeah that's what it is good call that's pretty nice huh that is good this is definitely an rs232 connector which is basically a serial data port which is really old but incredibly reliable yeah so they're still used on base every factory we've done a tour of like all these billion dollar factories yep cereals everywhere yep it works can you explain to me why that is other than like it's not they used to just be there with legacy machines right yeah but now they've got new machines i think and like this is just me me thinking out loud here i think that it is because they are reliable and i believe that they are more reliable because they uh well yeah so maybe that but you could you could make a usb connector screw together too right uh but like the baud rate is generally low okay so you're not you're not transferring a bunch of data and there's less chance for crosstalk that kind of stuff but uh yeah so this looks like just a usb to serial connector right here so something coming from inside the machine this is almost certainly the monitor yeah that's definitely the monitor and then this will go into it should go into a computer to configure it yeah there's a computer underneath this looks like power and some other stuff so it's got an hdmi connector that's got to go into the computer as well that goes into the fans they have hdmi now oh okay yeah they're going to do advanced they yeah so rgb leds are old now they come with displays i do i like it yeah that way you can customize it right right someone will take look at me this idea is for free okay so this has some calculations it's got example rq and pq charts uh we have some information on the structure of the tunnel so you look at this and then we can pan the camera over to the machine itself it's representing that on top so there are pressure sensors in here these pls we've got a bunch of pressure sensors in line here uh fan mounts over here pushes there that way there's a counter blower underneath the tester and actually that's what this is auxiliary blower suction flow and the fan goes over here so this is a block diagram of how to set it all up that's all that is it's pretty nice though this is really nice to have just put that right on the wall yeah exactly oh no it is not well we'll be taking that off and replacing that this week so this can fit into it okay so last couple things here we've got oh there it is counter blower so there's where that is i guess that's it for now it's cool it's um gonna take a hell of a lot of work to to learn how to use do everything right it's a lot of complexity here it's a lot of software too where we're gonna have to hook it up to a computer use a software that's involved and um yeah i'm looking forward to it but i don't expect anything immediate obviously we gotta do a lot of training our biggest goal is to approach things slowly and methodically make sure it's really done right and that means working with the incumbents in the industry so we've got a lot of learning to do we're not reinventing the wheel or anything like that we're basically using tools that manufacturers use to make their fans so that's awesome because it means that the specs on the box a lot of the time i know the manufacturers who use this type of equipment and uh if they don't match we're gonna find out about it but also at the same time you know i'm not just hunting for marketing lies although that is unfortunately often what we discover when we start something uh what i'm really looking for is just good data finally understand which fans are best because just throwing them on a radiator or something you can do that but it's not really the best way to test a fan because it's kind of hard to see the the differences there's a lot of variables involved and then we've also got this thing that we've got open too so that's going to be next on the list is the air compressor that hooks up to this it is large uh that's all i know about it and quiet should be generally quiet though yeah like 40 decibels okay at whatever distance they measure that at one meter one meter yeah okay so they actually have a standard yes that's weird i'm not used to that normally they all make up their own standard so then uh company b can say ours is 38 decibels it's measured at 0.8 meters anyway we're going to open this next got a lot to do uh you'll see it more in the future thanks for watching subscribe for more go to store.gamersexes.net as always to help us out directly we'll see you all next timeif something bad happens it's going to go off the side or it's going to run away just let it go everybody step away from it you got it it's not worth it hey everyone we don't do unboxing videos i think they're pointless drivel and they're a waste of time today we are unboxing this thing this is a fan tester uh this one's special that's the only reason we're unboxing it so i'm gonna be joined by patrick stone from the team we are going to be opening this thing this is our biggest investment we've done in testing hardware it's for testing computer fans and the goal is to produce some real hard data uh and finally start to be able to validate manufacturer claims with their own damn equipment this is what a lot of them use so i hope no one's lying out there stone do you think anyone's lying probably we're sponsoring our own video to help pay for this huge machine and commemorate a major milestone we designed this brand new red and black hud themed mouse map that's in stock and shipping now on store.gamersexes.net this special launch features a vibrant red and black design on the desk sized mouse mat delivering one of your most requested color combinations the design represents a heads up display with a tech slant and we've carefully color matched the stitched red border with a bright red while also offering anti-free resilience for long-term use our focus is on high quality so the mouse mats have a custom bright red rubber underside that we had to hunt down and tune specifically making this one of the most uniquely designed mouse mats on the market we're even signing and numbering 50 of them and mixing them in randomly into orders placed over the next seven days as a bonus too we just restocked our large bolt anti-static mod maps for pc building and they're in stock and shipping now you can grab all of these and more on store.camerasnexus.net while supporting our ability to provide in-depth testing and getting yourself something nice in return okay so uh this fan tester we talked about this a while ago but we've got a strategy i'll explain in a second here we'll see how it goes um the fan tester was a huge expense this is basically it'll do pq curves so it'll do pressure it'll do flow uh and it'll test all kinds of fan sizes so we can do 120 up to 2 something to 10 to 20. we'll see when i open it it was custom built it is uh certified and different methodologies we'll go over in the future and the equipment itself cost was like i think after all the customizations we did came out to about 46 48k uh us dollars shipping was like 10. so we're we're approaching 60 grand in this thing and um really excited to use it i said previously i don't know that we're gonna get roi on this anytime soon but i wanted it and i think it'll be fun to test with so i was willing to take a potential loss short term to be able to produce some unique and detailed data that no one else in reviews media is even capable of producing so that's what we're going to do ain't no one else doing this as we always say internally so now we're going to start saying it externally because we can really back it up with this all right i think the entire thing with the wood is like 1600 or 1800 pounds oh we don't need this then you lift no oh i left cpus this thing is intended to be opened up with a forklift which we there's no we can't really do that here like for many reasons he had an idea of maybe we're being very careful and cautious here we thought it through but we're gonna try and prop it up see if we can slide the pallet out that might not be possible if not we're gonna pull all the nails we're gonna open it up and then we'll figure out what to do i might have to contract someone to bring in a forklift for a couple hours and do the rest but um the forklift is needed because we have to get the fantastic off of the pallet once we get the box open we can't damage it yeah it's a thing that would suck that would really suck can we wheel each other around on this and have fun for a little while sure okay andrew hop on uh i think we just got to get all the corners off andrew you have safety glasses on oh yeah he's more safe than us oh yeah this is an air compressor this is required for the fantastic does it smell like like a burning smell i'm getting like a burning smell from pulling the nails out i guess it's high friction maybe a small copper i don't know maybe is that what it is ready to go to the top how free is it we're always free in america how free is it bald eagles gonna lift and bring it to your left my left your right yeah okay nice ooh can we make a torture chamber out of this look at that uh yeah oh no you could dodge if you're a person never mind not as cool got it it's like an old freaky dude may flower as i say i wonder if you might be able to roll it out but this might be a good time to consider our options not gonna be able to stop it if it's too steep of a ramp yep so we can maybe get on the pallet jack and move it back more make a longer ramp so it can naturally with us kind of providing some resistance from not behind it where we'll get run over i kind of like that so uh we could take the other side off and then stack it on top of this one assuming those casters turn sideways i'm a little worried about tipping the these two that we can see clearly do okay like this long way swing it out yeah okay yeah i guess we can take the walls off now i'm gonna lift this up if you want to slide that under you thinking we go yeah just all the way up actually that one might be bigger let's use that one first that wall yeah and then we'll put one of these small ones on top of this one i'm ready let's see how it stacks it's probably going to be too much but we'll see what happens the manufacturer is going to watch this and be like we're not warranty in that device oh wait that's not bad at all that's actually pretty good i think our biggest risk here is going to be rolling off the side so as long as we control be okay yep i would like mike and for the muscle but maybe get three other people to equal him how does this feel both of us on i don't think it's gonna break i want at the bottom these two to be connected this and the one below it at the top this connected at least three points to the this one is that like the dolphin from spongebob no plan for this is we're gonna try and swing this long ways and wheel it down this way this is our emergency stop so if we can't get control of it if it starts running away we'll angle it to this if something bad happens it's going to go off the side or it's going to run away just let it go everybody step away from it you got it it's not worth it okay and we'll we're going to be really slow on this so a lot of communication and if someone says stop then everybody hold it in place that should be that should be mostly it i think yeah so if you can put some pressure right there steve uh andrew you're probably gonna be better off on this side as well because there's not going to be much on that side you will be our safety for hey we're too close to the edge i think he's kind of helping steer too exactly right and then keegan from that position can you so you want me to support in here yeah that way if it gets out there do you have a tip in yeah i think we're okay with portfolio all right so let's go slow we're good right now andrew good on that side stone you feel okay good so far all right i'm just here keep it coming nice and easy was that just coming off it is yep okay sounded scary yeah punctured okay so let's figure that out i want to push back hang on hang on yeah leverage oh good idea you want tell me if you want more get two more hang on yeah so i'm gonna go up one more so what i'm going to do is i'm going to stand on this which should be enough to lift it out of that hole and it should be able to roll forward it's going to push weight on keegan's side did you punch through on that side keegan or no okay just trying to do just enough clear all right all right now let's try and just keep it moving nice and steady there's a hole in the back yeah yeah we should be able to get that so actually you two guys if you can push steve and i can steer and guy okay one two three keep it coming we're good keep it coming keep it coming looking great and done perfect good engineering stone nice work nice work okay so we got it off thin let me show you a couple things over here so overall went extremely well having four people to two to basically be the steering and two to be the resistance worked out great we had the wheel punch through here but because of all of the boards underneath it it was caught no problem another one punched through over there and uh fortunately just because of all this reinforcement down here that was the extent of the issue and then we just mostly stone levered it up on one side and then we used momentum to get it out of the other crater so no big deal worked out really well uh this is the fan tester i'm gonna actually open it now this is the only unboxing video you're ever going to get on our channel there might have been one nine years ago if there was i'm gonna set it to private and then this will be the only one on the channel i'm serious i will say it's private if anyone links it it's going away and the um other than that i guess we'll do another one when we get another machine in but that's going to be the only thing we unbox this scientific equipment because it's cool so fancy sound the display this is powerful enough to produce extremely bad data with extremely high confidence is how an engineer describes it to me so um so we're going to learn how to use it that's going to take us a few months these look like clamps i'm thinking this is maybe just was to hold them in shipping yeah that's about right yeah that's just to support it yeah that's what it is good call that's pretty nice huh that is good this is definitely an rs232 connector which is basically a serial data port which is really old but incredibly reliable yeah so they're still used on base every factory we've done a tour of like all these billion dollar factories yep cereals everywhere yep it works can you explain to me why that is other than like it's not they used to just be there with legacy machines right yeah but now they've got new machines i think and like this is just me me thinking out loud here i think that it is because they are reliable and i believe that they are more reliable because they uh well yeah so maybe that but you could you could make a usb connector screw together too right uh but like the baud rate is generally low okay so you're not you're not transferring a bunch of data and there's less chance for crosstalk that kind of stuff but uh yeah so this looks like just a usb to serial connector right here so something coming from inside the machine this is almost certainly the monitor yeah that's definitely the monitor and then this will go into it should go into a computer to configure it yeah there's a computer underneath this looks like power and some other stuff so it's got an hdmi connector that's got to go into the computer as well that goes into the fans they have hdmi now oh okay yeah they're going to do advanced they yeah so rgb leds are old now they come with displays i do i like it yeah that way you can customize it right right someone will take look at me this idea is for free okay so this has some calculations it's got example rq and pq charts uh we have some information on the structure of the tunnel so you look at this and then we can pan the camera over to the machine itself it's representing that on top so there are pressure sensors in here these pls we've got a bunch of pressure sensors in line here uh fan mounts over here pushes there that way there's a counter blower underneath the tester and actually that's what this is auxiliary blower suction flow and the fan goes over here so this is a block diagram of how to set it all up that's all that is it's pretty nice though this is really nice to have just put that right on the wall yeah exactly oh no it is not well we'll be taking that off and replacing that this week so this can fit into it okay so last couple things here we've got oh there it is counter blower so there's where that is i guess that's it for now it's cool it's um gonna take a hell of a lot of work to to learn how to use do everything right it's a lot of complexity here it's a lot of software too where we're gonna have to hook it up to a computer use a software that's involved and um yeah i'm looking forward to it but i don't expect anything immediate obviously we gotta do a lot of training our biggest goal is to approach things slowly and methodically make sure it's really done right and that means working with the incumbents in the industry so we've got a lot of learning to do we're not reinventing the wheel or anything like that we're basically using tools that manufacturers use to make their fans so that's awesome because it means that the specs on the box a lot of the time i know the manufacturers who use this type of equipment and uh if they don't match we're gonna find out about it but also at the same time you know i'm not just hunting for marketing lies although that is unfortunately often what we discover when we start something uh what i'm really looking for is just good data finally understand which fans are best because just throwing them on a radiator or something you can do that but it's not really the best way to test a fan because it's kind of hard to see the the differences there's a lot of variables involved and then we've also got this thing that we've got open too so that's going to be next on the list is the air compressor that hooks up to this it is large uh that's all i know about it and quiet should be generally quiet though yeah like 40 decibels okay at whatever distance they measure that at one meter one meter yeah okay so they actually have a standard yes that's weird i'm not used to that normally they all make up their own standard so then uh company b can say ours is 38 decibels it's measured at 0.8 meters anyway we're going to open this next got a lot to do uh you'll see it more in the future thanks for watching subscribe for more go to store.gamersexes.net as always to help us out directly we'll see you all next time\n"