I got everything working just fine and thought I'd share one other stumbling point I came across. Hopefully, this will save someone some time and aggravation.

A co-worker had a CP2103 laying around the office so I used that for my 3.3V TTL and downloaded the drivers from sparkfun. That's when I got my first "OK" from the Gainspan board. Everything else I tried to do would give me an "ERROR". So I looked to reinstall the drivers and went here to get some new ones. I had to do this for both my XP and my Win7 machines. The drivers I got from this website uninstalled my old drivers and put the new ones on. Everything is working great now.

Oops. You cannot connect directly from a PC serial port to the module. You will need to get 3.3V logic levels, and a standard serial port on a computer is not 3.3V. See how serial ports work. A USB-to-3.3V TTL converter works fine, and that is what I use.

Awesome. I'll give it a try and report back.

Edit: I just got my "OK" that I was looking for. Now, on to the WiFi'n. Thanks for the help Nick.

Webenglar,

Have you tried different baud rates to see if you can match with the module?
Are you using 3.3v levels?
Do you have tx on the module going to rx on the computer and rx on the computer going to tx on the module?


I apologize if these questions seem real basic, but just wanted to make sure.

I will check if there is a way to reset to factory default without the uart and will let you know shortly.

Thanks,
Nick

I did try different baud rates. No luck. I also thought I saw in either the datasheet or the manual that you can use a PC to talk to it. I'm going straight from the serial port of my laptop to the module. I don't know what the voltage is, I will double check that. Tx and Rx are connected properly. What program to you use to transfer your AT commands?

According to the documentation, the module requires repeatedly sending the "AT\r" command until an "OK" response is received. Are you sending "AT\r" multiple times until you receive "OK"? If you are, and you're never getting an "OK", it sounds like a baud rate or wiring/setup issue.

Thanks, but I have tried sending the AT command several times. I even took the time to ohm out the pinouts from the breakout board back to the module and everything seems to be good. I think it's a baud rate issue, but since it's out of the box it should have the default settings. Do you know of a way to reset to factory defaults without using AT commands?

I just got a gainspan 1011 breakout board in the mail to give my netduino some wireless comm. I looked at the datasheet and it appeared all I had to do to it was put power and rs232 on it and start throwing AT commands down the serial connection. I'm using my netduino for powering the gainspan board. I'm using a rs232 cable with flying leads coming from my computer and a program called RealTerm (v2) for talking to it. I started with the my settings at 9600,8,n,1. When I send the "AT\r" command, I just get jibberish back. It looks like the baud settings are wrong, but those are the default settings from what I can tell. Does anybody have any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong?