IOGEAR Bluetooth Serial Adapter, GBC232A

Pretty happy with this one. It took me forever (and several phone calls to Iogear) to get it set up, but tech support was patient with me. I'm a court stenographer, and I'm using it to send my "realtime" feed to my judge. There used to be a product specific to court reporting that did this same task for a lot more money, but that company went out of business last year and there hasn't really been any competing products in our industry. Now that this one set up, it works perfectly. This device saved me a good chunk of money and a lot of headache. Love it!

Several problems I encountered with setup, which I had to solve with no meaningful help from tech support:1) This adapter must be set to use the same baud rate, etc. as the serial device that will be connected to it. My barcode scanner said it was connecting at 57,600 baud, but the serial digital scale is set to 9600 baud. By default the adapter is set to 19,200. In this case it had to be set to 9600 since that is the setup on the serial device.2) While in setup mode, you cannot have a data cable attached, because if you do and you make setup changes using the config software, it will not save your changes. I don't know WHY, but that is what I had to do to make it save my changes--disconnect the serial data cable.3) One tech said to configure it with the config software, while another said to use the device Properties in Windows. The config software was the only way that worked for me.4) The config software must connect with the adapter via Bluetooth. Connecting via serial cable won't work. The config software asks which COM port you are using, but the dropdown has no entries, so you must manually key in "COM5" for example. Just below the COM port it asks for the baud rate, but I never did understand the point of that--especially since my purpose was to change the baud rate.

The unit that I got didn't work, it only displayed gibberish. I tested it along side a USB to Serial port to make sure that all of the setting and other devices were working OK, but I could never get the adapter to work properly. It would sent characters across the connection to my putty.exe application, but just gibberish.I worked with support and they gave some initial level 1 support suggestion of "did you follow the instructions" how did you set it up, step by step? Etc., but once I showed that I did follow the instruction and it wasn't working, they just started ignoring my emails and today I got notice that they were closing the ticket from no response in 72 hours (even though their own ticket summary shows that I was the last to update the ticket for the past 3 entries). That prompted me to give up on them and return the item, and I'll probably be avoiding Iogear now that I know how their support works.

The product is of the expected quality, it works without problems

the unit appears well built, comes with a power adapter, gender changer, and a driver CD. The documentation is sparse, printed in multiple operating system instructions in a really useless layout of steps. The drivers load from the CD cleanly to a totally unknown location. Later you are asked to reference this unknown location to manually add the driver to the comm port.It is a wonderful Idea, and technology ruined by a lack of usable documentation and a disjointed installation sequence. The setup says to contact customer service if you have any issues but no links or number is provided.So rating it a 3 overall and very low on ease of use.

The simple function of this device and set-up is pretty straightforward. I requested tech support help to make the devices communicate in Master Slave mode aka DCE DTE mode. The manufacturer's information stated: "The adapter offers COM port interface support to connect DCE or DTE devices and enable Master or Slave modes." However after basic set up was done I was told "this is where our tech support journey ends." IOGear support told me to go to Putty.org and learn how to write code to program them for DCE DTE modes. Amazon support could not help either. After lots of trial n error here's what I came up with to make it work. Once you have the software installed to discover the com port and MAC number. There is an option to select "Role" where you can select master or slave. The slave's mac number goes under Master selection, and the Master mac number goes under the one selected as slave. Then the other stumbling block was the baud rate. Make sure it matches your device, which may not be the default, especially if your device is really old. I hope this helps.

Works as promised. I have used another product from another manufacturer that was worthless. This worked the first time and every time.I let a few co-workers borrow it and they'll be ordering their own soon.

does not work with all of my programs like the corded USB cable does.

Got this one adapter to interface with aprsdroid on an android phone and a Yeasu FTM400. The 9 pin serial port allows for power to go in that way so you don't need the ac adapter but you will still need a regulator from 12V to 7.5V but that could fit in the serial shell (mine did). Range is really good. Yes, it is a bit more expensive than some options on ebay.

I bought this so I could monitor air quality from my DC1100PRO (with the serial port). I got it working on Windows 10. It was a little tricky, but now that it's working, it seems to be solid. I thought it wasn't working, but the serial device itself just doesn't give very much information very quickly and I had to wait to see it appear in PuTTY on either COM5 or COM3.Note: I purchased a separate Bluetooth Class 1 dongle for my computer so I could use this, as class 1 gives you good range whereas all the others do not. My DC1100PRO is in my bedroom because of asthma and the device is accurate compared to all the smart devices you can buy these days (I can't share the link on amazon unfortunately, but google for Air Quality Monitor Test Results Grimm and a CMU create lab page has some great info.)

Would be good if it came with a battery pack. I would believe that most users are using this device remotely. The product works well.

I use this product for connecting two old devices that only have a serial port to my desktop wirelessly through bluetooth.Only thing I’d caution is before you purchase make sure you know your device serial port connection settings (baud, stop bit, hardware flow control, etc). If you can’t find these and you don’t have the patience to figure it out try a different method of connection than this device.

Works perfectly on Mac Osx