STX must be a nemonic for some byte, no? An ASCII character is 7 or 8 bits, depending on your definition, so "STX" could never be sent as one byte as ASCII.

Is there a link to the manual for the projector?

here's a link for the serial protocol:

Sadly, panasonic tech support has told me they won't help me, as they do not support usb-> serial converters. strange, but I think I may call them and pretend to be someone else. though if you have a clue, it would be a help.

Ive tried with a nullmodem cable, a pass through cable, and just nada, nothing doing, so I am guessing it has to do with this STX 'command' ETX string.

thanks, matthew

I've seen this before where the commands were sent in hex STX = 02 ETX = 03

~s

Turns out STX and ETX are ASCII control chars: http://www.december.com/html/spec/ascii.html STX == 02 ETX == 03

Wow, this is a great resource - I was a little lost here. One last question and I can link this all together, how do i send hex numbers out the serial object?

thanks for your help guys...

best matthew

As an update to the above - I've tried everything I can figure out, but of course sending anything through the serial gets converted to an integer there. So sending a '2' actually results in '50' - spell, atoi and so on don't cut the mustard.

so how to send hex out the serial port then?

I've done a projector remote to switch on and off the projector with serial commands. It uses an arduino only. You can find details (in french) at http://machines.zombideo.net/?cat=11 and code at http://zombideo.net/appli/arduino_code_proj_command.zip

Hope it helps.