Hello,
1_ Is there any way to read all the serial ports connected to a windows machine in VEE?
2_ Can regedit be manipulated (intentionally of course) by VEE? More specifically: can "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\COM Name Arbiter" be cleared?
Thanks for the help,
Best Regards
Sima
Hello Stan,
Thanks for the reply. It's better to explain the problem.
I am testing a product that has UART to USB converter on board. So, whenever a board is connected to the computer it gets a new port number. Then, 2 things should be addressed in the production test of thousands of boards:
1/ To avoid the operator reading the port number from device manager each time and feeding it as user input to the test program, I need a way to read the port numbers (and their definition) in use, inside VEE, at the beginning of the test for each board. Then based on the in use port list, the program can assign the board's port number to the serial instrument that is registered in the instrument manager.
2/ The computer has a definite ports numbers that it can assign (in the order of 200-300) and when that is reached the COM Name Arbiter needs to be cleared.
So, I was hoping for a command/object/... inside VEE that reads in use serial-port-list of the windows machine. Any other solution is also very much welcome.
P.S. In the case of the regedit you didn't say how . I know it is dangerous but it is safer than asking an operator to do it every now and then.
Kind Regards
Sima
Editing the registry is simple but remember that it is VERY DANGEROUS.
Write a registry script and import it using regedit, as in regedit [script]
The simple script below removes the ComTest key from HKLM.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\COM Name Arbiter\ComTest]
-insert blank line here-
Similarly you can add keys (remove the hyphen) or read existing keys (/E command line option)
As for " read the port numbers (and their definition)" that could get tricky though might also be simple. Try piping the output of "mode" into a file then reading that file into VEE and parsing to get the info you want. It will look something like the below example.
C:\Temp\temp>mode
Status for device COM3:
-----------------------
Baud: 9600
Parity: None
Data Bits: 8
Stop Bits: 1
Timeout: ON
XON/XOFF: OFF
CTS handshaking: OFF
DSR handshaking: OFF
DSR sensitivity: OFF
DTR circuit: ON
RTS circuit: ON
For followon I'd suggest wandering over to VRF since there are folks in VRF with lots of experience.
Stan
(1) unclear what you mean by "control serial port", but if you mean "can I read/write to a serial port" then sure, no problem. Configure the port in Instrument Manager and go at it.
(2) It is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS since you would need to be running with elevated permissions to alter HKLM and you are messing with the registry so any small typo could corrupt your OS quite nicely. But the direct answer is yes, you most certainly can alter the registry using VEE and regedit.