Re: [Boost-users] Asio Serial ports: enumerating all the devices

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Asio Serial ports: enumerating all the devices
From: Kerry, Richard (richard.kerry_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-04-11 11:00:00

> I don't know whether there are any devices that only 
> receive commands and never send answers, but in an infinitely large 
> universe anything is possible 

There are......

> My knowledge of serial communication is very limited, 

You need to learn about it before you can do this sort of task.

Provided you know the comms params (baud rate, parity, stop bits etc) and you know that your device does send responses to all commands you may be able to determine whether a specific device is present - possibly just by recognizing that *some* data has been returned.
Unfortunately serial comms is a notoriously unstandardized field so this type of task is essentially impossible in the general case.
(standards are so good everyone should have one ....)

There is no built-in equivalent to TCP's ability to detect connection and disconnection, or SNMP's standard MIBs.

Unhelpfully,
Richard.