A common support question with the HandyWave HPS wireless RS232 serial adapters is confirming a communication between the two radio modems.  I have written this small tutorial to guide you through testing the communication between two RS232 radio modems to check that you have a reliable link.  This method is called loopback testing and can also apply to testing your computers serial port and USB to RS232 adapter.

Step 1. - Make a small connection with a wire or small paperclip between pins 2 and 3 on your DB9 serial transmitter, below is picture of our HPS-120 transceiver.

Step 2. - Connect the other unit to your serial port on your PC and power both units up, in the case of the HandyWave HPS-120, make sure you have a solid green light on both units.  If it is flashing, you will be in a configuration mode and you will have to hit the reset button to exit out of this mode (also note that the units will be in the standard 9600 BPS configuration).

Step 3. - Download the COM Part Tester from Hosenose.com – Link Here

Step 4. - Run this application on your PC and select the correct COM port, the other setting are the default communication baud for the HPS-120 radio modem.

Step 5. - Click ‘Open Port’ which will enable the  ’Loopback test’ and ‘Start continuous send’.

Step 6. - You should now see a list of characters appear on both the ‘Status’ and ‘Received data’ windows.  If nothing appears in the ‘Received data’ window then there may be an issue with your COM port settings, or in the unlikely event, a faulty pair of HPS-120 modems.  This guide is also useful for confirming the settings once you have changed the baud rate, stop bits and parity on the HPS-120 radio modems.