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I'm currently working on making a wired USB connection wireless. The current setup is as shown here:

enter image description here

4 sensors using serial communication (UART) is attached to a serial-to-USB device which is connected to a Windows tablet. On the tablet the FTDI driver creates 4 virtual COM ports which onboard software uses. This interface to the software (the virtual COM ports) is rather fixed and shouldn't be altered.

The goal is to remove the wired USB cable thus making the tablet wireless. I was thinking this could be obtained by inserting a device (RPI?) reading the USB data and transmitting them wirelessly to the tablet. I don't know how exactly nor if this is the right approach.

enter image description here

So my question is: How do I obtain the wireless setup that I want?

PS: If the Raspberry Pi solution is right, I need to program it so that it can read the USB data and transmit it wirelessly. And also I need software on the tablet to receive the wireless data and create the virtual COM ports and put data onto these. Is this correctly understood?

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You can use usbip to forward USB connections over any network, including wireless. It is a standard part of the Linux kernel, but you have to check the OS variant you are using on your Raspberry Pi if it's enabled by default. The Raspberry Pi will act as a server, exporting the four COM ports. The usbip program (in the package of the same name in e.g. Debian/Raspbian) is needed to set this up. For the Windows client, you can download a binary from the link given above.

There are a number of blog entries going into more detail, e.g. here.

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  • Okay, this is certainly in the right directly! Thanks. But I assume that this requires the RPI and the tablet to be connected to the same network. Will it still work that if the tablet is connected to an ADHOC network provided by the RPI?
    – user3452622
    Sep 22, 2016 at 13:14
  • It will work over any kind of network connection, as long as the hosts can reach each other: WLAN, LAN, internet, even modem makes no difference, nor does the number of routers in between. Your RaspPi can be in London, and your tablet in New York.
    – dirkt
    Sep 22, 2016 at 14:46

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