Spitronics made converter cables to interchange cables between similar products. The cable below could convert your Mercury, Neptune and Venus2 USB cable to fit the new Pluto, Pluto2, Mercury2 Neptune2 Orion, Orion2 and Venus3 products.

Communication between devices and the Tuning Software is done via a USB Cable manufactured by Spitronics. The electronic components for communication was put in a separate cable to reduce production cost and board space on the devices. The cable can work on all the current devices and are only required for tuning. The electronics in the cable consist of the USB converter as well as isolation devices. This cable will protect the laptop during high voltage interference. This cable requires drivers to be installed to operate on a laptop. They can be downloaded from the Spitronics website under Downloads – USB Drivers.

The baud rate to all products are 19200. As development progressed over the years these products were upgraded as well. Spitronics started out when USB was only in the beginning stage and very expensive to use on micro design level. They started out using a standard USB to RS232 converter for laptops that did not have serial ports. Nowadays, these serial com ports are discontinued so the RS232 were abandoned and changed over to UART directly. This saved the 2 RS232 chips. One in the cable and one on the device. Later we found that during tuning, the 9pin D-Sub connectors were coming loose during tuning and were also prone to static discharge doe to the metal housing. So they changed to the clip-in Molex connector which is the current cable and will stay like that for a while. So keep in mind that cables between the products do differ.

In some cases, you may require an adapter to use the USB cable on older products. See below for an explanation of the different types over the years. The current cable (left) clips into the device and won’t fall out during tuning. It will also not be vulnerable to static as the metal counterpart. This will be the style for the future.

Download the PDF for more info on the Spitronics Comms. Cable RS232 – USB to UART product.

Click here to go to Spitronics Comms. Cable RS232 – USB to UART in the Downloads Manual