Serial Port Monitor

Pros: Can monitor everything I want even if I am not a serial port expert ! Filtering tool is very useful identifying message send and received.

Cons: Working on serial ports is not one of my areas of expertise. For the moment I'm using basic functionalities and I don't think I'm in a position to offer constructive criticism on this subject.

Overall: Originally I wanted to reverse engineer a usb toy (such as a rocket launcher) for an Arduino project with my son. The project is still ongoing but decoding the messages to be sent was quick with serial port monitor.
I then got interested in understanding the workings of a treadmill that we use in my sports club. The work is much more complicated but I think I'll be able to succeed with time. Once again, I'm not an expert in serial communications and serial port monitor makes my job much easier.

Pros: Worked as described, no issues with "could not open port" I had on other similar solutions. could be used without studying a manual.

Cons: N/A.

Overall: I'm developing a BIOS for a homegrown Z80 system and the only way to do interface is via the serial interface. Unfortunately some features like the Xmodem support are very tricky to debug. There is no terminal software I have found that would log the complete communication between the remote device and the terminal software. I was already thinking about writing a minimal terminal software with this capability, but then I found Serial Port Monitor works without such hassle. I know since X64 Windows this has become difficult - even Microsoft does not support their old Portman software anymore. So count me impressed!

Pros: It can monitor data traffic between PC application and serial unit without using additional hardware.

Cons: I've tried with a few apps, so far I haven't found one during testing.

Overall: I have tried many serial port monitors, but unfortunately none of them could meet my expectations. To my knowledge, this is the only serial port monitoring program that can monitor serial port traffic without hardware intervention. I think the price is also fair, that's why it got 5 stars from me.

Pros: I spend most of my time putting together hardware components and writing microcontroller firmware to interface to various sensors, actuators and communications. Understanding how these components connect to each other, often using UART or Serial technology. Serial Port Monitor (SPM) allows you to visualize everything that happens to the serial port (whether it's a physical serial port or a virtual one, encapsulated by USB).

The real benefit of this software that I wasn't able to find in any of the other possible tools I'd looked at is that it's not just the user data that flows to and from the port, but every event, a change of baud rate, configuration of stop bits and flow control. It can also do this in a transparent mode, allowing other software to run on your PC and to "open" the serial port. Every communication back and forth between the software and the serial hardware are captured in SPM.

Cons: I haven't found any significant deficits; SPM is modern with a slick UI, really intuitive and easy to use and it just works.

Overall: Developing interfaces with Serial and UART communications is difficult. Hard to develop, hard to troubleshoot and really hard to reverse engineer where some serial devices are decades old, with the manufacturer gone bust years before.

Recently I was asked to reverse engineer a serial printer and make it work with recent operating systems and applications. Using SPM to capture and analyse the serial traffic enabled me to view the conversations that were occurring and replicate them; I did this in just a couple of days making it 2-3x faster than writing with ever more debug and trace logging.

The other really helpful feature is the ability to both record and playback serial communications. This is really handy when you're retrofitting software as you can just play back the data and make sure that your code responds in exactly the same way.

Pros: We teach electronic communication courses to our students. Children love this practice and enjoy the lesson. Thanks to this application, our lessons are more fun.

Cons: N/A.

Overall: Thanks to this application, our lessons are more fun.

Thank you Eltima...

Pros: Allows one to create the required virtual serial network quickly and effortlessly. The interface is easy to use.

Cons: The software has its cost but that is reasonable.

Overall: Great software. I would recommend it to anyone needing a virtual serial port network functionality in place.

Pros: There are several software packages that claim to be “port splitters, “ but the Eltima software ACTUALLY DOES WORK!

The Eltima products work so easily, due to their system level drivers, which allow direct integration into the “Com Port” environment.

This is the most easily configured and maintained Port Replication package I have ever used.

Cons: There really wasn’t any issue with the software that wasn’t answered by reading the extensive documentation, available on the web site along with blogs, by users of the software.

Overall: Eltima Serial Port tools allow you to create, replicate/duplicate virtual ports with ease! I REALLY wish that I had gone ahead and implemented the Eltima product to begin!

Pros: I found the user interface easy and intuative.
Not that I used it much, but the online help is comprehensive and well designed.
Multiple monitoring options.

Cons: Price is a little high for my occasional hobbyist use.

Overall: Debugging of communication issues in my application was simplified enormously.
If I ever have a professional need in the future SPM would be my first choice.

Pros: Great product. Most especially, I love how easy it is to save messages in the original .spm format.

Cons: SPM is a bit expensive, but its operations are top quality.

Overall: Since the beginning of my current project, I’ve been using the Eltima Serial Port Monitor for diagnostic data analysis, and I really liked it.