To create a UDP connection, do the following:

  1. Select Connection → New UDP connection in the main menu or select UDP connection in the Home window:

UDP connection

  1. Specify the connection name;
  2. Choose the local COM port to be used in the connection;
  3. Check Create as virtual port if you want a virtual COM port to be created for this connection;
Note: a virtual COM port can have the same name as an existing real port. In this case the virtual port will “overlap” the real one, with the latter becoming inaccessible to other applications.
  1. Enable Strict baudrate emulation in the Serial port settings if you checked Create as virtual port and expect to send data in large blocks (2 KBs or more). This will limit the baud rate of the virtual port to the value it is actually opened with and will usually prevent potential data loss.
  1. Check Use different port to receive data if you want data from remote hosts to be received on a different UDP port than it is sent.
  1. Specify the name or IP address of the remote host(s) along with the UDP port to send data to;
Note: The UDP ports you select should be allowed by your firewall and should not be already in use by another application.
  1. Click Create:

Click Create

After that, you can create a connection of the same type on a remote host.

When creating a UDP connection you can also configure: Serial port settings, Connection settings, Security settings and Signal lines settings. The rest of this page covers them in detail.

Serial port settings

  • Baudrate: Specify rate at which bits are transmitted (bits per second). The baud rate is the rate at which information is transferred in a communication channel. In the serial port context, “9600 baud” means that the serial port is capable of transferring a maximum of 9600 bits per second. To be able to communicate at the maximum speed, both local and remote ends must be configured to the same baud rate.
  • Parity: Specify the parity checking type. Parity can be one of the following: none, odd, even, mark, or space. If Parity is none, parity checking is not performed and the parity bit is not transmitted. If Parity is odd, the number of mark bits (1s) in the data is counted, and the parity bit is asserted or unasserted to obtain an odd number of mark bits. If Parity is even, the number of mark bits in the data is counted, and the parity bit is asserted or unasserted to obtain an even number of mark bits. If Parity is mark, the parity bit is asserted. If Parity is space, the parity bit is unasserted.
  • Data bits: Specify the number of data bits to transmit. Usually, the transferred bits include the start bit, the data bits, the parity bit (if used), and the stop bits. However, only the data bits carry useful information. You can configure Databits to be 5, 6, 7, or 8. Data is transmitted as a series of five, six, seven, or eight bits with the least significant bit sent first (little-endian).
  • Stop bits: Specify number of bits used to indicate end of a byte. Stop bits could be 1, 1.5, or 2, however almost all contemporary devices are configured to 1 Stop bit. Please, note that both ends of the serial port must be configured to transmit the same number of stop bits to work properly.
  • Flow control: Specify the Flow control type. Flow control is usually used to ensure that the receiving serial port device can handle all of the incoming data sent to it. Send dialog provides the following values you can assign to Flow control: Xon/Xoff (commonly used for asynchronous communication), Hardware and None.

If specific port settings are expected by the device attached to your real COM port, you can set. (These settings can be dynamically adjusted by the remote host if the Telnet protocol is used.)

Note: If the Create as virtual port option is checked, the default port settings will be greyed out, as in this case the settings are to be defined by the application that opens the COM port.

Packet detection settings:

  • Add pause between packets – wait for the specified time after every network packet sent.
  • Before sending data wait for – accumulate all data in a buffer for the specified time before sending it out to the network.
  • Send out the data when the block is – accumulate all data in a buffer and send it only when it reaches the specified size.
  • Send data when received char with code – accumulate all data in a buffer and send it only when a character with the specified ASCII code is received.

Connection settings

In the RAW mode that is used by the UDP connection, the Receive data from and Send data to dropdowns let you configure the access permissions when communicating with multiple remote hosts at once. The available options are:

  • Receive data from:
    • None – no data will be accepted from any host.
    • Only first / Only last – data will only be accepted from the host that is currently first / last in the list.
    • Last active – data will only be accepted from the host that responded last.
    • All – data will be accepted from all hosts (default).
  • Send data to:
    • None – no data will be sent to any host.
    • Only first / Only last – data will only be sent to the host that is currently first / last in the list.
    • Last active – data will only be sent to the host that responded last.
    • All – data will be sent to all hosts (default).

Signal lines settings

In this section you can configure the signal line states of the local COM port for when the connection is not established.