Tony, you might look into the XBee modules from
Maxstream. The
are serial<->Zigbee bridge modules that are very easy to configure
and use. They are also cheap at ~$20/ea. They may solve your problem.
Thanks for the suggestion. I had heard of them, but I've never tried them
(I think they were mentioned in Elektor a coupel of years back, for
example).
I've not managed to look at the manuals for them yet, but my main worry
is that they'll require some kind of hardware flow control. Surely, since
they can work at just about any abud rate, and since the 2 ends of the
link don't have to run at the same rate on the host port (do they?) they
must use flow control (otherwise what happens if a machine witha 9600
baud port is talking to to a 110 baud teletupe :-)). Maybe this isn't a
problem if the 2 ends are set to the same rate, I will look into it.
And certianly the price is low enough to be worth experimenting with.
-tony