Have you ever had a serial device you wanted to use over the Internet? Turns out its easy to do with com0com. This open source program lets you create a virtual serial port pair. You can use the pair to connect two programs that “think” they are both talking to a remote program over a serial port. You can also tunnel the end point over the network to a remote machine’s serial port. In addition, there are tools to let you do things like share a single serial port with multiple programs. This might be useful, for example, if you want to use a single RS232 GPS with several programs that expect direct connection to the GPS. It would also be useful for monitoring a serial connection.

This article explains how to use my favorite GP3 over the internet. The software running the GP3 runs on one computer and the GP3 is connected to a remote computer across the LAN or around the world.

Although the article uses a GP3, almost anything with a serial port could use the same technique. After all, the GP3 has no idea it might be connected remotely. This tool could “hack” a lot of RS232 devices and transform them into network devices.