Product description
The TwinCAT Virtual Serial COM enables to access serial EtherCAT terminals from a Windows application. This allows to communicate with your serial devices from your own written application (e.g .NET, C/C++). The access to a virtual serial com port is provided by the standard Windows API for serial communication.
Option 1:
The TwinCAT Virtual Serial COM can be used on a local TwinCAT system, where the EtherCAT bus is connected. Therefore you can easily enlarge the limited distance of serial communication upto several hundred meters.
Option 2:
Alternatively, the TwinCAT Function can be installed on a remote system, which is connected to the local network. The TwinCAT Virtual COM communicates via ADS over TCP/IP to the target system.
MSDN C++ sample
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff802693.aspx
MSDN C# sample
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/c8zc5kah(v=VS.80).aspx