AutoHotkey Community

[aobrien]

Hi haichen,

You provide some very good input. Hopefully, within the next week or two I will get some time to make the changes.

aobrien

[Jinxx]

Hi Everyone,

I am a total noob when it comes to AHK and COM stuff in general.
What I was thinking I could do with this script was send data out on pin on pin 3 which should increase the voltage on that pin.
From there is would trigger a relay that opens a cash drawer.

When I copy and paste the ahk script from the 1st post (the not port.dll one) and run it I get this error after it saves the notepad file:

There is a problem with Serial Port communication.
Failed Dll CreateFile, COM_FileHandle=-1
The Script Will Now Exit.

I'm not sure what to do to fix this, but as I said once I have worked my way through this fantastic script I will simply make a hotkey (say F12) to send data to COM1 increasing the voltage on pin 3 and triggering a cash drawer.

Can anyone help me out with the error?
Or perhaps pointers on where/what I can cut down on in the script?

Thanks in advance
~ Jinxx

[aobrien]

Hi Jinxx,

That error means that the Initialize_COM() subroutine failed to connect to the serial port.

What you should do is uncomment line 298 shown below so that you can see the COM_Settings that are being sent to the routine.

[Brater]

Hi!
Many microcontrollers can communicate via (virtual) COM-ports with the PC (UART interface).
A very easy but famous open source (!) microcontroller project called Arduino (this is a small advert for this project because i really like it very much!!).

Back to topic: the Arduino project serves a so called "Serial Proxy". It allows accessing the COM Port as network connection.
You can find the download here: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software (scroll down until the end). I did not test this tool but maybe makes your problems easier and bypass the baud rate limitation.

Brater

[newbynewb]

I cant make heads or tails of this.... id like a script to listen to the com1 port and wait untill it sends... "done intitalizing" but i dont want it to stop the output to hyperterminal... basically I want to still use hyper terminal for everything except I cant get the text so I need this to make a desison when the specific text apears anyone wanna help?

[aobrien]

Hi newbynewb,

what you need to do is log your HyperTerminal traffic to a file. Do the following:

1) In HyperTerminal go to Transfer -> Capture Text -> then enter the path/file name of where you want to log the data.
2) Search the file until you see the desired text.
3) Use this function to search for the desired text. This functions basically causes your script to stall until the "Needle" is found.

[aobrien]

Hi All, I have updated the Serial (COM) Port Script to make it stdlib compatible as suggested by haichen. If for some reason someone should want the old non-stdlib version then send me a PM and I'll gladly send it to you.

Regards,
aobrien

[Drugwash]

Hi, I'm interested in this script but haven't checked it out yet. Basically I'm posting mainly to get any further updates in this thread.

My only interest is a dual communication (Send/Receive) between an AHK application that I'm building and a Mitsubishi Alpha controller, using the RS232 interface. I'm new to it and haven't yet read the controller manual, but a simple yes/no/maybe answer to the question "could your script work as needed?" would suffice, for now. Thank you in advance.

[trenton_xavier]

@Drugwash
I think it would. I don't know what communication protocol you're using, but I use a custom built version of this script everyday to communicate via Modbus to different controllers. Check out the specs and let us know what you're dealing with.

[Drugwash]

The controller uses a simple RS232 protocol (8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, DTR On, RTS On). I managed to build a custom script that communicates with an emulator - another AHK script that emulates the AL2 controller - but I stumbled into an odd issue: while trying to send a string of 105 bytes as a command, the emulator only receives 14 bytes, although the sender confirms all 105 bytes were sent. I'm not aware of any such limitation and couldn't find information on the web in this regard. Will keep digging but any help would be welcome. Thank you so far.

[aobrien]

Hi Drugwash,

These AHK serial scripts will send all the bytes out in one shot. So if the receiver is not able to keep up then you will loose information.

I have never really used DTR/RTS. I always make sure that the receiver can handle the input. You would have to work some extra logic (DLL calls) in there to read the RTS bit every byte or something to make sure that it is OK to send data.

aobrien

[Drugwash]

By tinkering with the timeouts and file creation attributes I managed to get an almost OK pair of scripts. I say 'almost' because it still throws a few errors every now and then. My tests were performed between Win98SE and WinXP. I hoever failed to run either script under Win7; it just refuses to open the COM1 port. The port exists, is enabled, everything is OK in Device Manager.
I should mention that your script doesn't work either, under Win7. I've tried setting the AHK exe to run as administrator, UAC and other useless crap are all disabled - to no avail. If you find any help in this regard, please share the knowledge. I'll keep digging myself too.

[Michael@Oz]

Thanks aobrien, great script.

I needed one which returned errors rather than the MsgBox errors, so I have modified yours.

I also added;
RS232_Status:=RS232_GetCommModemStatus(RS232_FileHandle)
& RS232_EscapeCommFunction(RS232_FileHandle, nFunc)
which can get/set pins, see script for details.

I also changed the write function to take strings instead of the HEX values.

It's here with a couple of demo programs.

EDIT: bugs fixed

Perhaps you could consider a Script Variable such as RS232_ErrorMessages=true/false and add silent errors in your script?

[Michael@Oz]

I used your (modified) COM code in my example programs to demo the Pololu Wixel wireless thing in my first Instructable. If you are interested in robotics or hobby electronics you may be interested.

I'll tidy up my changes to RS232 and edit the above post shorty.

[specter333]

I've been trying to get this to work with my LG TV using the code from this post because it seems to have the codes I need already and converts them before sending to the com port,
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28703&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=37

But so far no luck. I get communication using the LG app eZ-NetManager and the script no longer gives me error when starting after I finally got the com port issues worked out, but I don't have communication.

As far as I can tell the error comes at around line 357 " ;###### Read the data from the COM Port ######" . By the time it gets to 365