Serial port communication in Windows 7 using Hyper-terminal and Putty

Keywords: Serial port communication in Windows 7 using Hyper-terminal and Putty, Putty, Hyper terminal in Windows 7

Some times you need to access serial port of your PC/LAPTOP to perform some actions like if you want to connect a GSM modem or if you are an Embedded systems programmer then to access program or interface your micro-controllers to your system.

If you are performing these tasks on either Windows or Linux then you will requires some program that can communicate with your hardware and system. In the old days, Windows used to be provided Hyper terminal but now from Windows Vista they don’t provide such a tool, could not understand the reason though .. 🙂

How ever you can still use Hyper terminal in Windows 7 as well as you can use other freely available serial communication utilities like Putty. Putty is a great and free tool and available for both Windows and Linux platforms.

Before I start please note that :
  1. If your system does not have any serial port , you can still use a USB-to-Serial adapter  When you buy a USB-to-Serial port adapter you will get a driver for it as well. This driver makes a virtual serial port in your system.

  2. In Windows, serial port named as COM port.

  3. If you want to use Hyper terminal than you have to download this file.

  4. If you want to use Putty than download this file from here.

 Now you have to follow below steps to communicate with your device:

Step – 1: Connect your device with your system through RS-232 cable or USB-to-Serial adapter and check whether it’s connected successfully or not.

(see step 2)

Step – 2: Open device manager and check for COM ports , it get assigned a COM port or not. See below screen shot.

If you are not aware about accessing device manager then follow this post.

Step – 3: Note down the “COM port number” as we will require it.

Step – 4: Check user manuals or other reference documents related to your hardware for the following information:

Baud Rate

Data bits

Stop bits

Parity

Flow control

Above properties are critical to make the communication correctly, if you don’t configure these properties properly then you will get either junk data or no data.

If you are going to use Hyper terminal than follow Step-5 to Step-9 otherwise follow Step-10 to Step-12.

Serial Communication using Hyper Terminal

Step – 5 a Extract the downloaded “hypertermina.rar” file in your system, open the “Hyper terminal” folder and double click on hyper terminal application. You should see the window like the screen shot given below.

ht1

Step – 5 b Insert a name for the connection, for ex. “Techawarey_HT_Test”.

ht2

Step – 5 c Select your “COM” i.e Serial port.

ht3

Step – 5 d You will see the window like below screen shot. Set the values, you noted before remember i.e. According to your device requirements.

ht4

Step – 5 e Now you are ready to communicate with your device. I am inserting a screen shot which shows a messages received by the device.

ht8

Step – 6 a By default you wont see the character you type,but if want to see the character you type that is going to received by your device then you have to click on ‘properties’, you will see the window like below:

ht10

Step – 6 b Click on “settings”, you will see the window like below, click on ‘ASCII Setup’.

ht11

Step-6 c Select “Echo typed character locally”, see screen shot below:

ht12

Step – 7 a If you want to receive a file from your device the click on ‘settings’, then select ‘Receive file’ option. 

Step – 7 b Choose the receiving protocol whatever your device support, see attached screen shot.

ht9

Step – 8 If you want to send a file , then select “Send file” option and sending protocol. 

Step – 9 Similarly you can capture the text and save it in a file.

Serial Communication using Putty

Step – 10 Double click on downloaded ‘Putty.exe’, you will see a window like this:

Putty1

Step – 11 Select ‘serial’, insert com port and baud rate value and click on ‘Serial’ (Left pan), you will see a window look like this:

Putty2

Step – 12 Enter all the setting according your device and then click on open,

Putty3

Step -13 After clicking on ‘open’, you will see a window like this, now you are ready to communicate with your device.

Putty4

Putty is much more than a simple serial port communication tool, I will cover more on Putty in my future post.

For now, that’s all now you can communicate with your device using serial port, Please like and share if you find it useful.. 🙂 🙂

 

40 Thoughts to “Serial port communication in Windows 7 using Hyper-terminal and Putty”

  1. Klefer

    You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be really something that I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I’ll try to get…

  2. Vishnu Dhanuka

    Can u pls help me out i m using TERA term software by mistake i have write wrong value using command Ad -C5 -O
    AD -W now iam not able to reset the setting can u pls help me out

  3. I use Hyperterm to contro/read GSM modem. Is there a way [software] that can do the folowing:1. Access data from GSM modem 2. Process that data. 3. Store in Excel sheet? OS: Windows Vista

  4. Hyper terminal? Ir reminds me of dark ages of PC communications 🙂
    Why not using some more modern terminal
    for example https://docklight.de/
    with macro messages setup (even adjustable one) and scripting and all it is much much more powerful tool to develop serial port communication or simply test device.

    Of course there are many other programs but I prefer docklight since it is made so many years ago and it is still maintained and updates so I like to think it is mature an bug free 🙂

  5. Mir

    Worked like a charm. Thanks bud.

  6. sir please reply fast because my project is on 11 th july

  7. sir ,when i am opening hyperterminal then its showing host address and port ..???what should i use for host address and port no.

  8. Pradeep

    Sir I have a weighing machine,it is showing garbage values like “hhhhhhxxxx” in hypeTerminal while using Usb To Serial converter,so how to over come this problem?

  9. shu

    Hi
    I cant set my phone no and country .
    How to set it actually
    When i type AT+CMGS=
    It say +CMS error 517
    Why this happen.

  10. You can use putty, teraterm and other similar terminals for serial port communication.

  11. Anonymous

    what if the computer does not have hyperterminal installed

  12. Anonymous

    I’ve 2 systems, system A (host – windows OS) and system B (target – windows OS). So I’ll connect a serial cable from system A to system B. From system A, I would like to go to system B – C drive, how can it be done through COM port?

  13. Anonymous

    hi, if i am typing key it is not displaying..
    please help.
    thanks

  14. Dave

    I need a way to send the ASCII charictor set ie: CHR$(254) using PUTTY. In Visual Basic 6 the command is ” MSComm1.Output = Chr$ (254) “

  15. Anonymous

    Hi Then how u done CCNA
    jkljl;;zcj[

  16. Nauman

    This is indeed a very useful post. Thanks.

  17. dheeraj sachdeva

    i am not able to write any thing sir

  18. Hi. Thank you for the article.
    I need to send a File over serial port, but I think it’s impossible with putty becasuse this program don’t have some menu for this action, it’s true?

    Thanks.

    1. Hi Manuel,
      Thanks for your comment.
      Putty does not have that option.
      If you are using windows then use hyper terminal(download it form the link given in the article) and in linux you can use “minicom”.
      Minicom also ha option for file transfer but I did not use it personally so i might not be able to tell you about it in detail.

  19. faruk@communicationcrafts.com

    ya it’s connected through serial port only but not able to read the data.

    1. can you explain what configuration settings your are using?

      1. Abhi

        Hi,
        I am also facing the same problem. I am running hyperterminal using COM1 port. The setting checked in Device Manager shows 9600,N,8,1 however the return of data is in form of XX~X. I am using auto detect in the setting. Please help.

        Thanks
        Abhi

      2. @Abhi : Try setting baud rate manually, start with 4800,,,

  20. faruk@communicationcrafts.com

    Hi, Please can you guide me how can i connect wight balance machine rs232 with PC and get auto weight on my computer screen

    1. HI,

      First check whether your PC has a serial port or not.

      If not then you have to use an USB to RS232 converter cable.

      Install the driver from the cd of USB-2-RS232 converter into your PC.
      It’s provide a virtual serial port to use.
      Now connect RS232 part to your device and USB part to your PC.

      Power up the weight machine and open a hyper-terminal or any other serial port utility or software provided by the machine vendor and start the communication.

      Configure serial port properties according the user manual of your weight machine. To know about serial port settings read the full post.

      Hope it’ll help you.

      Have a nice day!!!

  21. tim

    Is there a free program that will allow me to see the hex data from a device plugged into a USB port. Not sure how to do this task. Can you help!
    Thank

    1. Hi,
      I am not sure but i think there is an utility named as usbmon.

      Please google for it.

  22. Anonymous

    I need a terminal program that will allow me to see the data stream coming in from a USB device plugged into a USB port on my window 7 PC. Is there such a thing?

    Thanks

  23. Anonymous

    Hello everybody,
    yes I could connect to my device both with putty and with hyperterminal, i am using a usb-adapter and i have only the problem that i can not read at all the text shown on the screen, i read and see only special signs.
    what do you think that i have to change
    best greetings
    julian

    1. Hi,
      Check your serial port settings like Baud rate , data bits, parity , stop bits and flow control for both your device and putty. These should be same.

  24. Anonymous

    How to transfer file through putty between your host and target? Thanks

    1. well, it’s not mention whether you want to transfer flle over SSH or serial port. If you just want to transfer some files from one system to another then you can following linkes:
      https://community.freescale.com/message/220760#220760

      http://techawarey.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/ftp-server-in-linux-ubuntu-install-vsftpd-in-linux-ubuntu/

      if you want to transfer a file over serial port and your target is some embedded hardware then you have to check manual of your target where the commands must be given to perform to these action.

    1. Anonymous

      Great tutorial. Up and running in no time!

  25. Anonymous

    Yes! well done my problems are sorted

  26. Anonymous

    dis is amazing,,,keep it up,,,u doing a gr8 job!!1

    1. rexaline

      really it worked thank u so much…. keep it up buddy

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