The pre-installed Visual Studio C# class for manipulating serial ports in C# is found in the following namespace:
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| // The class for manipulating serial ports in C#
System.IO.Ports.SerialPort
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To get a string list of the current active COM ports on the computer, and then populate a combobox with this list, use the code:
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| // Populates a combobox with a string list of the active serial port names
// e.g. "COM3", "COM8"
ComboBoxComPorts.ItemsSource = System.IO.Ports.SerialPort.GetPortNames();
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The SerialPort class contains an handy enumeration of commonly available baud rates. The following code shows how to populate a combo box with these values.
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| // An enumeration of common baud rates is used to populate
// a combo box.
foreach (int i in Enum.GetValues(typeof(SerialPort.BaudRate)))
ComboBoxBaudRate.Items.Add(i);
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To set up the SerialPort class for use, you have to set the parameters shown in the code below.
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| SerialPort serialPort;
public void ComPortSetup(
int baudRate,
int numDataBits,
string portName,
StopBits stopBits,
Parity parity,
int readBufferSize) {
this.serialPort = new SerialPort();
// Set up serial comms
this.serialPort.BaudRate = baudRate;
this.serialPort.DataBits = numDataBits;
this.serialPort.PortName = portName;
this.serialPort.StopBits = stopBits;
this.serialPort.Parity = parity;
this.serialPort.ReadBufferSize = readBufferSize; //Default dataIList
}
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Then you can use code like shown below to open and close the serial port for use.
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| // Opens the port. If already open, will close first.
// If null, returns false.
public bool OpenPort() {
try {
if (this.IsOpen())
this.CloseAndDisposePort();
serialPort.Open();
} catch (Exception e) {
MessageBox.Show(Convert.ToString(e));
return false;
}
return true;
}
/// <summary>
/// Checks whether serial port is open.
/// </summary>
/// <returns>Returns true is serial port is open, returns false if serial port is closed or null.</returns>
public bool IsOpen() {
if (serialPort != null)
return serialPort.IsOpen;
else
return false;
}
/// <summary>
/// Closes and disposes of serial port.
/// </summary>
public void CloseAndDisposePort() {
serialPort.Close();
serialPort.Dispose();
}
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