While serial port programming was absent in .NET version 1.1, Visual Basic developers who grew accustomed to the MSCOMM control in VB6 will be glad to know that this functionality is supported again in .NET 2.0. Learn to use the SerialPort class to make two computers talk to one another or even to manipulate a mobile device from your computer using Bluetooth.
by Wei-Meng Lee
March 23, 2006
isual Basic programmers who do networking programming will no doubt be familiar with the MSCOMM control in VB6. For those of us who followed VB's progression to VB.NET, it was a big surprise to find that control missing in .NET 1.x. What we had instead was Platform Invoke (P/Invoke), which was the only way to access the unmanaged Win32 APIs from your managed application. Fortunately, the situation has been rectified: In .NET 2.0, the functionality of the MSCOMM control is restored in the form of the SerialPort control (located under the Components tab in the Toolbox).
In this article, I will show you how to use the SerialPort control in .NET 2.0 for your serial communication needs. In particular, I will build a chat application that allows two computers (connected using either a serial cable or a Bluetooth connection) to communicate. One interesting use of this chat application is in communicating with external serial devices. You will learn how to use the AT commands to programmatically control your mobile phones through a serial Bluetooth connection.
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isual Basic programmers who do networking programming will no doubt be familiar with the MSCOMM control in VB6. For those of us who followed VB's progression to VB.NET, it was a big surprise to find that control missing in .NET 1.x. What we had instead was Platform Invoke (P/Invoke), which was the only way to access the unmanaged Win32 APIs from your managed application. Fortunately, the situation has been rectified: In .NET 2.0, the functionality of the MSCOMM control is restored in the form of the SerialPort control (located under the Components tab in the Toolbox).
