Specifically, how feasible is to use a single RS232 serial line to control multiple devices?

Obviously there'd need to be a physical splitting of the cable to connect to multiple actual ports, but how do devices respond to receiving the wrong signals, i.e. intended for a different device?

Also, feedback to the actual originating controller could be tricky, having to sort out which device sent what.

Anyone actually tried this?

you can do as many 1 way controls as you like if they have the same baud rates, and just 1 device 2 way.

but if you need multipule 2 way devices then it gets trickey :)

As for locking a device up, I've seen it rarely. Marantz projectors were notorious for it. When I use the method above I try to connect devices that have like protocols. LG TVs are great for this because they share the same protocol but can have different IDs.

Yes, We've tried and it works as long as the devices have the same baud rate. In one instance we controlled one of our multiple input video scalers and a Sanyo projector using an RS232 "Y" cable connected to our "Mini-Touch" base station RS-232 output port......see below.



The default baud rate of Sanyo is 19,200 and we changed to 9600 to be compatible with the scaler.

More recently we did a similar installation with Mini-Touch controlling a Sanyo projector, one of our Mini-HD scalers and one of our Mini-PA2 power amplifiers. Instead of using a breakout cable we used a breakout box made by Kramer. In this case there was some bottle necking that slowed the reaction time of the scaler. This was resolved by removing the scaler connection to the box and daisy chaining the RS232 from the Mini-PA2 power amp and then it was working normally.

Have not tried two-way communication using the above method so can't answer that question for you, however, one way seems to work fine as long as all devices using same baud rate.