Yes thanks BTL, for the confirmation of the “theory” although it may not help Glenn’s situation, there may be something worthwhile.
In my case, my software reads data from the serial port and I’m not going to change it. Therefore I don’t care if the data is supplied via WiFi, Bluetooth or handed down via the ancient Egyptian Sun God, Ra himself, it will always have to be converted to serial data.
Therefore that would require a hardware device to do the conversion, Yes, an extra step, but not expensive and much easier than trying to reconfigure my software to suit.