IOGEAR Bluetooth Serial Adapter, GBC232A

the price is a little bit expensive, and not easy to use as it should be first initialized at Windows platform, then use as a Mac serial resources.nevertheless, this adapter can work as a effective serial resource, thanks to it, my Mac can configure from wireless RS232 connection.

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.

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!

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.

I am using this to tune my mega squirt ecu over Bluetooth. It takes about 30 seconds to connect after each restart. The setup is a bit time consuming and tedious, but the instructions explain it well enough.

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

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.