title: Receiving data from multiple devices using parallel wired RS232
body: <p>I'm currently developing a small application for monitoring the power / current our solar collector is generating.</p>
  
  <p>The array is connected to 3 inverters. Every inverter has a RS232 interface, transmitting one Line of information(its current status) every 10 seconds.</p>
  
  <p>Since I want to do the monitoring using a device only having one serial port, I need to come up with a way to be able to read the data from all of the inverters in parallel.
  I don't need to send anything to one of the inverters!</p>
  
  <p>Is it possible to just connect 3 RS232 wires in parallel to one serial port? Collisions will be pretty unlikely since every inverter is transmitting only 64Byte / 10seconds ending with a newline, so I could check for variable line lengths to detect collisions. </p>