C. writing pc software to use a serial port – Pololu Wixel User Manual

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PuTTY is a free Windows terminal program that can send and receive bytes on a

serial port.

If you need to send and receive non-ASCII bytes, you can use the

or Br@y Terminal.

6.c. Writing PC Software to Use a Serial Port

You can write your own computer program that communicates with a serial port. The freely available Microsoft .NET
framework contains a

class that makes it

easy to read and write bytes from a serial port. Here is some example C# .NET code that uses a serial port:

// Choose the port name and the baud rate.

System.IO.Ports.SerialPort port = new System.IO.Ports.SerialPort("COM4", 115200);

// Connect to the port.

port.Open();

// Transmit two bytes on the TX line: 1, 2

port.Write(new byte[]{1, 2}, 0, 2);

// Wait for a byte to be received on the RX line.

int response = port.ReadByte();

// Show the user what byte was received.

MessageBox.Show("Received byte: " + response);

// Disconnect from the port so that other programs can use it.

port.Close();

Pololu Wixel User's Guide

6. Using a Virtual COM Port

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