Reverse engineering a serial protocol

1. Determine how to make the connection

Most serial devices can be accessed via a serial RS-232 cable. However, most computers these days don't have this port.
The [RFC2217](http://blog.philippklaus.de/2011/08/make-rs232-serial-devices-accessible-via-ethernet/) protocol with the help of an RJ45 to RS-232 cable should do the trick.
There are several tools you can use to initiate contact once connected:

- YPort: Part of the opensource ethersex firmware
- ser2net: Nice serial to network proxy that is still kept up to date
- socat: socat STDIO:/dev/ttyS0,nonblock,raw,echo=0 TCP-LISTEN:1234

2. Determine the baudrate

Great tool for determining baudrate called [baudrate.py](http://baudrate.googlecode.com/)

```
sudo ./baudrate.py -p /dev/ttyUSB0
```

Press up to test the higher baudrate, down for the lower.
115200 is the most common baudrate.
**baudrate.py** will create a config file when Ctl+C is pressed
Run minicom with the confin file to get shell

```
minicom nameofconf
```