iPhone Serial Cable Finally Available

href="http://cdn.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/c2db9_rgb_m_large.jpg">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-22761" title="c2db9_rgb_m_large" src="http://cdn.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/c2db9_rgb_m_large.jpg" alt="" width="432" height="299" />

Last November we covered a hacked-together href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/iphone-hacked-to-run-over-serial-port/2010/11/01/">iPhone serial cable, and then in December one was href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/iphone-serial-cables-go-into-production/2010/12/28/">set to go into production. Well, it’s finally available. href="http://redpark.com/c2db9.html">Redpark has developed an iPhone serial cable, for sale through their website. For a mere $59, you get a cable with an iOS dock connector on one side, and a male DB-9 connector on the other.

Unfortunately, there’s no SCSI ability baked into iOS, so no apps will work with your old printer, network drive, or whatever else you want to interface with — yet. Redpark is also releasing a Serial Cable SDK, so that people can develop apps to talk between iOS and ancient hardware. Hopefully these apps will be allowed on the app store, but otherwise it’s jailbreak time!

What sort of devices can you use this on? Redpark does a nice little roundup:

Ham radios, dive computers, point of sale devices, Arduino and other micro-controller platforms, scientific instrumentation, data loggers, RFID readers, automobile engines, routers and other networking devices, glucose meters, fire alarm panels, irrigation controllers, weather stations, specialty printers, scales, temperature sensors, flight loggers, satellite radios, model cars (models boats, planes and rockets too), CNC machines and more…

Oooh, that does sound like fun. Especially the Arduino one…

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