Serial Port Communication and Terminate Program

[sumitm]

Hi,

I have two different problems. I am trying to get data from a measuring device connected to a com port. It came with an original software which runs at the command prompt and spits out the data. I am trying to replace that with a CVF6.6 program that other than collecting the data also does other things with it.

So far I have been able to successfully capture the data with CVF except that when I first start up my laptop. I have to start that consle program and quit it by pressing Control C. After that my application runs fine.

So I believe my program does not do some initialization of the com 1 port that the console app does. Can anyone guess what that could be.

My code uses

SPORT_SET_STATE(1,19200,0,8,1)

SPORT_CONNECT(1,0)

SPORT_READ_LINE

and once done reading the data it does

SPORT_CANCEL_IO(1)

and SPORT_RELEASE(1)

If anyone can point out what else is required for the proper initialization, that would be very helpful.

2. I thought of a way out by launching the console application prior to my data collection and terminating it. So I have used ShellExecute and the console application can be launched. To kill it I need to press Control C and I want to do that keystroke programatically.

So I invoked

iret=SendMessage(NULL,WM_IME_KEYDOWN,VK_CONTROL,0)

and

iret=SendMessage(NULL,WM_IME_KEYDOWN_VK_C,0)

The compiler gives me an error saying VK_C does not have a type and must have an explicit type. It does not give any error for VK_CONTROL or VK_RETURN.

Is there something I am doing wrong and also what is the procedure to emulate a Cntrl+C keystroke.

Also is there another way of killing a process automatically that has been started with Shell Execute.

Thanks for any help.

Sumit

[Jugoslav_Dujic]

I'm not familiar with serial port communications and SPORT routines. However, there's also SPORT_SET_TIMEOUTS which seems relevant.

I assume you have1) ran the console application and 2) called SPORT_GET* from a test app to retrieve the settings, then 3) copied these into your SPORT_SET* settings, right?

Having the settings appropriately set via SPORT_SET is of course better than cludge with Ctrl+C. However:

1) You cannot SendMessage to a console application, especially not with first parameter null 2) even if it were a GUI app, it should be WM_KEYDOWN, not WM_IME_KEYDOWN

You need keybd_event or SendInput API instead, which really simulates keyboard strokes:

interface
   subroutine keybd_event(i1,i2,i3,i4)
   !dec$attributes stdcall, decorate, alias: "keybd_event":: keybd_event
   integer::   i1, i2, i3, i4
   end subroutine
end interface

call keybd_event(VK_CONTROL, 0, 0, 0)
call keybd_event(IACHAR("c"), 0, 0, 0)
call keybd_event(IACHAR("c"), 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0)
call keybd_event(VK_CONTROL, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0)

IACHAR is obviously the missing chain -- VK_virtual-keycodes for alphabetic characters are equal to ASCII codes.

Jugoslav

[sumitm]

Thanks Jugoslav,

Your comment about get_sport_state got me thinking and I found that my iresult value on set_sport_state was non zero indicating an error. Then I realised that the set_sport_state should be invoked after SPORT_CONNECT and not before.

Now everything works fine.

Thanks for leading the thought process.