Read from serial devices on USB
Hi, I'm trying to communicate with a usb serial device plugged to a USB port. I've seen some examples with boost::asio and connecting to ie: /dev/ttyUSB0 for linux, or COM1 for windows etc. But i need something more robust and multiplatform. Like listing all the available devices and choosing by looking at the vendor id, or device id or something like that. How can i do that? Can this same approach be used later for say... bluetooth serial devices? How? Thank you all in advance. Alejandro
Hi,
Hi,
I'm trying to communicate with a usb serial device plugged to a USB port. I've seen some examples with boost::asio and connecting to ie:
/dev/ttyUSB0 for linux, or COM1 for windows
etc.
But i need something more robust and multiplatform. Like listing all the available devices and choosing by looking at the vendor id, or device id or something like that.
It's not possible to list devices or get OS-specific data, but you can use the OS-API for that. native() will return the native type.
How can i do that?
Can this same approach be used later for say... bluetooth serial devices? How? The devices are usually handled similar, thus they are presented as "COM1" or "/dev/tty...". If the OS can load appropriate drivers, the API will gain access automatically. This abstraction also means, that you don't get access to the device itself, only to the serial connection. Thank you all in advance.
Alejandro
Regards, michi7x7
First of all, thank you for your time.
It's not possible to list devices or get OS-specific data, but you can use the OS-API for that. native() will return the native type.
So i need to write specific code for each platform, right? What is the type i get from that "native()" call in windows and in mac (the two target platforms).? So i can search for the docs for each and then do some... #ifdef PC, etc. And on what should i call such "native()" method? Can i assume the os-specifics "native type" for PC/WINDOWS ie(winxp, 2000, vista, 7, etc) to be the same or is that also a concern? Are there any known libraries that wrap around this stuff to avoid getting into this stuff? Thank you again, Ale
How can i do that?
Can this same approach be used later for say... bluetooth serial devices? How?
The devices are usually handled similar, thus they are presented as "COM1" or "/dev/tty...". If the OS can load appropriate drivers, the API will gain access automatically. This abstraction also means, that you don't get access to the device itself, only to the serial connection.
Thank you all in advance.
Alejandro
Regards,
michi7x7 _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users
Hi,
So i need to write specific code for each platform, right? What is the type i get from that "native()" call in windows and in mac (the two target platforms).? So i can search for the docs for each and then do some... #ifdef PC, etc. And on what should i call such "native()" method? Can i assume the os-specifics "native type" for PC/WINDOWS ie(winxp, 2000, vista, 7, etc) to be the same or is that also a concern? Are there any known libraries that wrap around this stuff to avoid getting into this stuff? Thank you again, Ale
i haven't used the serial io_service yet, but i guess it uses a file handle created by CreateFile() on Windows (http://lists.boost.org/mailman/options.cgi/boost-users/mailing-lists%40michi...) and on Linux and MacOS surely a file handle to /dev/tty... is used (because these FIFOs can be opened using fopen()). native() returns a file-handle then. Because I haven't yet used such functionality, i don't know of any library that wraps it, but you might contribute one to bost ;) On note to the bluetooth-question: I just found parts of a bluetooth-device-api on MSDN, I'm not sure if Windows can wrap them to COM-Devices. But I'm quite sure, that there are no problems if they can be accessed using "COMXX". Regards, michi7x7 PS: usually you use a COM-Port to send data to one device without thinking about how the data gets transfered. If you need to set loads of parameters though, I'm not sure if "COMXX" or /dev/tty... is the right approach for you. PPS: of course you can set parameters like baud-rate or arity using boost.asio
Hi again,
i haven't used the serial io_service yet, but i guess it uses a file handle created by CreateFile() on Windows (http://lists.boost.org/mailman/options.cgi/boost-users/mailing-lists%40michi...) and
Damn clipboard, here is the correct link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363858(VS.85).aspx <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363858%28VS.85%29.aspx> Regards, michi7x7
I'll take a look at those, thank you again :D. I guess i will have to do some research. Fun, except because i'm very time constrained :P. Meanwhile, there seems to be a libusb port for windows that respects the same api. http://www.libusb.org/wiki/libusb-win32 On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 4:18 PM, michi7x7 <mailing-lists@michi7x7.de> wrote:
Hi again,
i haven't used the serial io_service yet, but i guess it uses a file handle created by CreateFile() on Windows (http://lists.boost.org/mailman/options.cgi/boost-users/mailing-lists%40michi...) and
Damn clipboard, here is the correct link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363858(VS.85).aspx <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363858%28VS.85%29.aspx>
Regards,
michi7x7 _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users
On Wednesday, September 15, 2010 2:17 PM, Alejandro Martínez wrote:
I'm trying to communicate with a usb serial device plugged to a USB port. I've seen some examples with boost::asio and connecting to ie:
/dev/ttyUSB0 for linux, or COM1 for windows
etc.
But i need something more robust and multiplatform. Like listing all the available devices and choosing by looking at the vendor id, or device id or something like that.
How can i do that?
I'm not aware of any portable libraries to do this. Each operating system has its own proprietary interface to the USB stack, and these are sufficiently different from each other to make a portable abstraction difficult. Even so, something like that might make a good boost library. Maybe built on top of asio...
Can this same approach be used later for say... bluetooth serial devices? How?
I'm not sure. Do operating systems even keep their Bluetooth interface similar to the USB interface?
participants (3)
-
Alejandro Martínez -
Andrew Holden -
michi7x7