C# serial port programming example

However, some devices need to be send certain commands, and it will reply with the data that the command calls for. For these devices, you will write data to the serial port, and use the previous code to get the data that will be sent back. In my example, I will be communicating with a scale. This command is specific for this scale. You will need to read the documentation of your serial device to find commands that it will receive. To write to the serial port, I have created a "Start" button on the form.

And that is all you need to do. I have attached the Visual Studio solution. How to receive data from com port. None, 8, StopBits. WriteLine port. Cristian Ciupitu Robert Harvey Robert Harvey k 44 44 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Hi, I am trying the same but that event handler method does not get called! PrashantPimpale were you able to resolve your issue? I just Disconnected the device and had a cup of tea and then started! In other case it might be issue with the connector that you are using.

It means that in one hand it has timeout for no any data and throws TimeoutException. In other hand, when any data has received, it receives data either until maxLen bytes or short timeout theoretical 6 ms in UART data flow. BaseStream rather SerialPort functionality.

Close ; Console. Yakov Yakov 1 1 silver badge 8 8 bronze badges. Yep, especially ReadAsync is much more convenient. BaseStream ; portStream. Leonid Vasilev Leonid Vasilev Luckily for you, the SerialPort class has created an event that is raised whenever there is new data in the input buffer. In our case when data is received by the input buffer, the event will stop the program, call a method where we would most likely handle the data, and then go back to where our program left off.

We will delve into this in the next step. The first thing we need to do is to tell our serial port what method to call when it receives data. This is done with the following line: mySerialPort. DataReceived represents the method that is called to handle the event. Just one more note: you will want to make sure when using events that you declare your SerialPort object as a class level field so that you can use it in multiple methods including the event handler.

Different methods and procedures fit different situations, so you will have to find one that works and that you like to use. I personally like using the events whenever possible since they are the most efficient and leave the program free to do other things, but everyone has their preferences. In the next step I am going to talk about how to write to a serial port.

Good news! Writing to a port is incredibly easy! The other two write methods are also similar; the only difference is the data type of the data to send.

To use them, you provide an array of bytes or characters which will be written to the serial port. The offset parameter just specifies what element of the array to start at i. If you pass it 0, it will start at the very beginning of the array; if you pass 1 it will start at the second element.

The length parameter is simply the length of the array. Remember to perform these write operations within a try-catch block because they readily throw errors.

The same concept is applied to Write and WriteLine. If we want to recognize them as characters on the hardware side you must have your own decoding logic present there. I hope this is helpful to you and your next project. This was something that I personally struggled to figure out so I hope that this will help you have an easier time learning how to interface over a serial port.

Feel free to post comments, questions and feedback below. If you are new to serial port programming using C ,I would recommend that you check my previous tutorial before starting. If you are creating an Empty Project you will have to add all those references manually references to System. Drawing etc.

Creating a Form. After you have created the project you can use the designer to Create your own Serial Communication program by adding and rearranging the controls on your Form1. Now here I am only going to explain how my Form1 is arranged and what are code snippets that make it tick. All of the code that makes the program is inside the Form1 partial class. First thing to do is to add the System.

Ports namespace to the top of your code so that you can use the SerialPort Class in your program. You can access the Form1. In my Form,. A " Log " TextBox to Display additional information to the user. Below Figure shows the Name associated with each control on my Form. I didn't want to use the default TextBox1,ComboBox1 naming convention as it was quite confusing. After the form is populated with the required controls,We will change the " FormBorder Style " to " Fixed Single " using the " Properties Window " so that user will not be able to change the size of program window.

You can also change the name of your Form from Form1 to Simple Serial [c ] by changing the " Text " property of Form1 as shown below. We will also disable the " Maximize Button " on the Title Bar. Adding Standard Baudrates. A new Window will open, manually type the baudrates line by line and then press OK. Detecting Available Serial Ports. After you have decided on the Visual style , name of the properties and controls in your program ,Its time to add the functional part to your Form1 code.

The method returns the available serial ports in a string array. Detecting OS version. This was added just for fun.