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Serial Interfaces

National Instruments, a market leader in PC-based instrument control, offers the most complete family of serial interfaces for communication with industrial devices using RS232, RS485, and RS422. You can rely on hardware and software that offers superior performance, high reliability, and increased productivity.

Find the Right Serial Product

Serial Standard
RS-232 |
RS-422 |
RS-485
Form Factor
Ethernet |
ExpressCard |
PCI |
PCMCIA |
PXI |
USB
OS Support
Windows |
Real-Time |
Linux
Number of Ports
At least 1 |
At least 2 |
At least 4 |
At least 8
Max Transfer Rate
At least 20 kbit/s |
At least 100 kbit/s |
At least 400 kbit/s |
At least 1 Mbit/s
Max Devices / Port
At least 1 |
At least 14 |
At least 31
Add RS232 and RS485 serial ports to NI CompactRIO systems
Add serial ports to your laptop computer
Learn about the new portable USB-232 serial interface

Serial Hardware Interfaces

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PCI

National Instruments serial interface boards for PCI are asynchronous serial interfaces for communicating with RS232, RS485, and RS422 serial devices.

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PXI

National Instruments serial interface boards for PXI are asynchronous serial interfaces for communicating with RS232, RS485, and RS422 serial devices.

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PCMCIA

National Instruments serial interface cards for PCMCIA are asynchronous serial interfaces for communicating with RS232, RS485, and RS422 serial devices.

ExpressCard

National Instruments ExpressCard serial interfaces provide communication to RS232, RS422, and RS485 serial devices for next generation laptops.

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Ethernet

National Instruments Ethernet serial interface device servers are asynchronous serial interfaces for communicating with RS232, RS485, and RS422 serial devices.

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USB

National Instruments USB-232 and USB-485 interfaces transform USB ports into asynchronous serial ports for communication with RS232, RS485, and RS422 serial devices.

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Legacy Serial Interfaces (PCI and PXI)

National Instruments legacy serial interfaces for PCI and PXI provide communication to RS232, RS422, and RS485 serial devices on Windows 9x/Me/NT.

Serial Software

NI-Serial Driver Software

The enhanced NI-Serial device driver works with NI-VISA for easy configuration, improved performance, and fast development.

Instrument Driver Network

Choose from more than 5,000 FREE, downloadable instrument drivers to simplify and reduce the cost of instrument control test program development.

Instrument Control Software

Take advantage of software development environments optimized for instrument control including NI LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, and Measurement Studio.