CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studioarduino
user758362
user758362

Reputation: 291

Communications between Visual C++ and Arduino:

I have a Arduino app that needs to talk to my PC across the USB (Serial) connection. I have this bit of code that I lifted from the Arduino Playground at

http://arduino.cc/playground/Interfacing/CPPWindows#VisualStudio2008

  this->serialPort1->PortName = "COM5";  // Replace with your COM port!
  this->serialPort1->Open();
  this->serialPort1->Write( "7" );  // In the future,  you'll expand on this
                                    // to write your custom data to the board
  this->serialPort1->Close();

My question is how does one determine what COM port the Arduino USB cable is attached to?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1743

Answers (1)

JMcDaniel
JMcDaniel

Reputation: 358

There are several ways you can approach this.

The most obvious is that you simply make your application configurable and tell it which serial port to use. The port name should never change, unless you have other processes on your machine allocating virtual COM ports such as Bluetooth drivers.

A second option is that you can do what the Arduino app does and scan the serial ports on the system looking for the hardware. Since you are using the CLR, System.IO.Ports.SerialPort.GetPortNames() will give you a list of all the serial ports on the system. (You can also get this from the registry.) Then you can enumerate through them and check the status of the pins to see which serial ports have devices attached. You should probably include in your sketch a way to query the Arduino so that you can send it a command and have it give a fixed response. This would allow you to discern your application from other serial devices such as modems.

There is a third option which would involve figuring out where the FTDI driver stores its configuration information in the system/registry and going from there. This is a bit more involved, so I can't give any information on if this approach is even viable.

Upvotes: 0

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