I am interacting with a bill acceptor connected via serial in VB6 using the MSComm control. We're having some communication issues, and I have been tasked with using the Win32 API directly to interact with the serial port. I'm not quite sure where to begin. Any links, articles, or books would be greatly appreciated.
Serial Port Communication: perform serial port I/O without using the Microsoft Comm Control component
Richard Grier
Book Visual Basic Programmer's guide to serial communications available from Amazon or direct from author
Sometimes still active on the VB6 newsgroups - try asking there
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First allow me to say that I don't have any experience developing drivers for OSX, nor drivers for Windows. So, there are a lot of things that I don't understand about how drivers work; I'm sure it'll be evident in my question.
I have a modem that is able to open and close TCP/UDP sockets using AT commands. I would like to create some kind of program (kernel extension? driver?) that implements a network driver, converting the network interface calls into AT command serial messages.
That's the basic jist of it. I'm essentially asking if anybody can point me in the right direction / give me a high level overview of how they would approach it and what Apple guides to focus on.
The XNU networking stack -- like most network stacks -- expects network devices to send and receive IP packets directly. It isn't tooled to work with network devices that handle part of the network stack (like TCP or UDP) internally -- it won't be possible to implement a network driver which uses this device.
You might have more luck exposing this device as a SOCKS proxy. You will need to write a userspace daemon which listens on a TCP port on localhost (on the computer) and relays traffic to the serial device; once that's done, you can set the computer to use that device as a SOCKS proxy in the Networking control panel.
(As an aside: most devices that implement this type of interface have a very low limit on the number of open sockets -- often fewer than 10. They're unlikely to be able to handle the network load generated by a desktop OS.)
I have a created hardware communicating application using RS232 protocol in MFC. But as there is problem regarding voltage signal strength, i would like to shift from RS232 to TCP/IP.
Can anyone help me on this topic...?
The solution is to extend the microcontroller board with a serial device server.
Known brands are Lantronix or Moxa, but there are many other options and manufacturers. For an "embedded" solution that is integrated on your board, the "Lantronix XPort" is a typical product.
http://www.lantronix.com/device-networking/embedded-device-servers/xport.html
(I'm not affiliated with the Lantronix company.)
The Serial Device Server will connect to your RS232 on one end, and on its TCP/Ethernet side it offers usually a TCP server. It is usually configurable via network, through a built-in web interface, much like an Internet router.
Your PC application then needs to be changed as follows: Instead of opening a Windows COM port, you need to make a TCP client connection to that server, on a preconfigured TCP port. (Lantronix has 10001 as the default TCP port for this.)
But there is also special Windows driver software that lets you talk to your Serial Device Server / your microcontroller through a "virtual COM port". This is sometimes the best solution for legacy PC applications, where you cannot change the original code and have to use a Windows COM port. For a MFC application this might be a good choice.
In current scenario i am using RS-232 communication for operating hardware component from PC using Micro Controller in between.Whole Application is Created in MFC.
I am thinking to connect PLC for communicating hardware component to PC. So can anyone tell me how we can done this?
That depends on what hardware interface the PLC provides. If it does not use RS-232 (or ethernet) then you need an adapter. If your PC accepts plugin cards then you can probably get an adapter and driver in that form.
You need to figure out what protocol is used to communicate with the PLC e.g. COMLI, knowing that you will give you an abstract model to work with that you can use to control the hardware.
I need to create a Cocoa app that will create a virtual serial port available to other apps, meaning registered in the IO Kit Registry.
Gist of the app:
Create a virtual serial port (listed in /dev and registered with the IOKit Registry)
Initiate a tcp connection out to another computer
Proxy everything received on the virtual serial port out to the
network and vice versa.
This app will be used by third party apps that talk to serial ports on the computer, allowing for the particular serial device to be located across the network. The Cocoa and network part is no problem, I've written several apps that talk over the network. My hangup is the serial port.
I've done the test with socat/netcat/minicom to verify that it all works to proxy pty/tty traffic over the network but the tty I use doesn't show up as usable by random applications because it's not registered in the IO Kit Registry.
While I can use a pty/tty master/slave for the communication, I need this slave tty to show up to Mac applications. What would be very handy is a way to register a tty in the IO Kit Registry.
Do I really need to create a custom IOKit kext driver that gets registered at Cocoa app runtime? If so, I have a big learning curve ahead of me. Where should I start reading? Or, can I use IOKit to create a virtual serial port and register it as a usable serial port for applications without having to load any kernel extensions?
Thank you for any help you can provide,
Stateful
First of all, have you checked if you can borrow a solution from this app? It's not obvious from the website if they've managed to get their virtual serial ports fully integrated into the system.
If there is a way to do it from user space, I'm not aware of it. The user-space IOKit API generally doesn't let you create class instances, let alone new device driver classes. Maybe you can somehow otherwise persuade the Cocoa libraries to find it despite not being registered in the kernel.
I don't know if you could get away with creating a "dummy" serial port in the kernel and then move your tty into its place in /dev from your userspace daemon. Maybe that's an option.
In case you do have to do it all in the kernel:
The virtual driver itself shouldn't be too much work, at least, though it will require some time to get up to speed with kernel dev. Unfortunately, the documentation is pretty thin for serial port drivers - the key is subclassing the IOSerialDriverSync abstract class. Just about the only description I've seen is in Ole Henry Halvorsen's OSX and iOS Kernel Programming book. It also has a fragment of an example for the reading & writing operations. (disclosure: I was one of the tech reviewers for this book; I don't receive any incentives for recommending it - in this case it's literally the only documentation I know of) You can find the source for a complete serial port driver in Apple's USBCDC driver, AppleUSBCDCDMM is the class that actually represents the serial port node.
It's relatively straightforward to open a so-called "kernel control" socket in the kernel, the individual APIs are documented here; from user space you use the normal BSD socket send/recv APIs. (this is also described in the aforementioned book) Your daemon can then connect to that, and all you'd need to do is push the data between the socket and the virtual serial port device. You'll need to handle disconnect events and such correctly of course.
Still, I think this is achievable as a first kernel project for an experienced C programmer (with some C++).
I hope that helps!
So I have a bluetooth device, this device uses SPP to transfer data between the PC and itself. It connects fine through Windows as a bluetooth device. I can find it, enter the paring code and assign it to a COM port. Now I want to be able to send data through the com port using Windows API but it is refusing to do so.
I suspect that I need to setup the COMMCONFIG Structure correctly (see below)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363188(VS.85).aspx
Unfortunately I have no idea what is the proper setting. I know SPP is supposed to emulate the RS-232 communication... so maybe I have to study up on that to figure out the right setting? Or is there some automatic way to set the COMMCONFIG structure.
I seriously doubt it. If it would be used then you'll have no chance at guessing at the custom provider data without docs from the driver author. Pay attention to the handshake signals, serial port devices routinely ignore anything sent to them when the DTR signal is turned off. And not send anything back with DTR off. A driver would emulate that. Use EscapeCommFunction() to turn them on. Also try a serial comm program like HyperTerminal or Putty to test this so you can isolate the source of the problem.
Why not use the Bluetooth sockets API? No need for troublesome (virtual) COM ports then.
If you're using managed code then see my library 32feet.NET
If using native code, use SOCKADDR_BTH with Winsock connect etc, see e.g. Bluetooth and connect (Windows) Then you can use the standard Winsock send/recv API
Ok, I found that you can use the
GetCommConfig and GetCommState functions to figure out the settings.