Anyone good at programming in VisualBasic or something? Or know any free software that can do this?

I need to write an application that will read data from an RS232 device over the serial port and output it onto an OPC server.

The COM port settings need to be changeable, not necessarily graphically, and a prompt (maybe some characters and a terminator) needs to be sent to the device for it to make an output.

Any help or tips will be much appreciated.

 

Try these:

http://www.cpcug.org/user/clemenzi/t...s/SerialIO.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

I am sure there's a control called MSCOMM32.OCX or something that's just for that kinda thing - try project - components - microsoft comm control 6.0 in the list (That's in VB6).

From the VB help:
MSComm Control Example
The following simple example shows basic serial communications using a modem:

Private Sub Form_Load ()
' Buffer to hold input string
Dim Instring As String
' Use COM1.
MSComm1.CommPort = 1
' 9600 baud, no parity, 8 data, and 1 stop bit.
MSComm1.Settings = "9600,N,8,1"
' Tell the control to read entire buffer when Input
' is used.
MSComm1.InputLen = 0
' Open the port.
MSComm1.PortOpen = True
' Send the attention command to the modem.
MSComm1.Output = "ATV1Q0" & Chr$(13) ' Ensure that
' the modem responds with "OK".
' Wait for data to come back to the serial port.
Do
DoEvents
Buffer$ = Buffer$ & MSComm1.Input
Loop Until InStr(Buffer$, "OK" & vbCRLF)
' Read the "OK" response data in the serial port.
' Close the serial port.
MSComm1.PortOpen = False
End Sub

Note The MSComm control can use polling or an event-driven method to retrieve data from the port. This simple example uses the polling method. For an example of the event-driven method, see help for the OnComm event.

Good luck - hope this helps.

 

cheers frog

was starting to look at MSCOMM32.OCX. looks like it will do the job. just have to learn VB, and i'll be away