I'm currently working on a little project to make my field tests quicker for myself.

I am trying to design and make a circuit to replace a standard rs232 serial cable with a wireless adapter.
I work as a programmer on fire and security systems and under commissioning, I run back and forth to my computer and equipment.
My plan is to make a wireless connection so I can bring my laptop with me.

So far I'm looking at the hc-12 with a usb to serial ttl chip on to computer end and a hc-12 with a max232 chip on the other end.
Do any of you have any hints on where to go from here, or if there is a better way of solving this?

 

Welcome to AAC.

I used a pair of XBee modules a few years ago for a similar purpose. I had "one-wire" communication between two PIC's, and the XBee conversion was a drop-in replacement. The coding it uses is proprietary and very quick.

Today, everything has advanced, and I am not recommending XBee specifically. I am recommending looking for a similar drop-in replacement as it avoids having to write coding (e.g., Manchester code) to deal with disturbances in pulse width.

 

Thanks, just found this site and are impressed on it's massive content.

I am trying to make the module as small as possible. The little knowledge I have on Xbee is that you need a mcu like arduino for it to work.
But I might be wrong, I have not used XBee just watched tutorials on it.

I was hoping to eliminate the need of a mcu like arduino. On the HC-12 there is a mcu ready to go, but don't know if it will work for my purpose

 

I have just bought two HC-12 to experiment with and it seems to be an impressive module and pretty simple to use to make a long range serial link. As far as the hosts are concerned the link is transparent - they can't tell the link isn't via a cable - except for the delay introduced. As long as a short delay isn't a problem for you then I think HC-12 will be a good choice.