Z-troller with serial to USB not working - Solved!

[LizzieK]

I am trying to set up a number of zwave devices with my new HomeTroller using z-troller. I got the HomeTroller set up no problem but can't get the z-troller with a Trendnet serial to USB cable to work. I tried two different computers, matched the baud rates at 115,200, checked the com port on device manager and still nothing connects. I am running windows 7 on my main machine and vista on the old laptop, neither worked.

Why doesn't the z-troller come with a USB port? No one has serial ports anymore.

How can I get the system to recognize the com port the z-troller is connected to.

[Rupp]

Is this the hardware you are using? I have three of these and they work fine.
http://store.homeseer.com/store/Tren...able-P979.aspx

I would recommend putting in a help desk request if you purchased this from HS as it may be a bad converter or a bad Z-Troller.

[LizzieK]

Still can't obtain a handle for the COM port.

I have the Trendnet serial to USB cable and tried it on another machine. The cable looks fine, the z-troller works fine. I disabled the firewall, still doesn't work. When I run the driver software it shows up as a com port but hometroller will not communicate with the port:


Cannot open COM port 5, will keep trying...: Unable to obtain a handle to the COM port
I've seen lots of similar complaints all over this site but no good answers.
I am out of the warantee period and certainly don't want to spend more money than I already spent getting this to work. I have a new house full of z-wave devices I need to get working. I am looking into getting a serial board for my computer to see if that works. Do you think that will work?

Why doesn't z-troller just come with a USB port?

[Rupp]

I would recommend putting in a help desk request and see if they can help you get this working as it should work out of the box.

[LizzieK]

Where is the help desk?

Where do I find the help desk?

[Rupp]

Where do I find the help desk?

Look up at the blue support link. Select the licensing link to get a path to the help desk. Here's the direct link.
http://helpdesk.homeseer.com/

[LizzieK]

Got it to work

I found out that the z-troller has to be directly connected to the Hometroller to work. The Utube showed it connected to a regular computer which is what I tried. Once I connected the z-troller with the Trendnet cable to a USB port on the Hometroller-SE it worked fine.