RS232 and RS485 both turn up on the same vehicle-terminal spec sheet, and integrators routinely wire the wrong one. The choice is not about speed or age. It comes down to two questions: how many devices are on the line, and how far does the cable run...

Rugged vehicle-mount tablets are only as useful as the data they can read from the machine they're bolted into. On heavy-duty vehicles — tractors, excavators, trucks — that data comes off the CAN bus, and interpreting it correctly means supporting J1...