External Interfaces |
Description of Serial Example
The major tasks performed by serialexample
are:
1. Define Variables for Serial Port Configuration and Output
The first five statements define variables for configuring the serial port. The first statement defines the baud rate to be 9600, the second defines number of data bits to be 8, and the third defines the number of stop bits to be 1. The fourth statement defines parity to be off, and the fifth statement defines flow control (handshaking) to be off.
SerialPort_BAUD_9600 = 9600; SerialPort_DATABITS_8 = 8; SerialPort_STOPBITS_1 = 1; SerialPort_PARITY_NONE = 0; SerialPort_FLOWCTRL_NONE = 0;
The last variable definition sets the terminator character for writing to the serial port, to a carriage return.
2. Create a CommPortIdentifier Object
Instead of constructors, the javax.comm.CommPortIdentifier
class has static
methods that return an instance of the class. The example calls one of these, getPortIdentifier
, to return a CommPortIdentifier
object for port COM1
.
3. Open the Serial Port
The example opens the serial port, by calling open
on the CommPortIdentifier
object commPort
. The open
call returns a SerialPort
object, assigning it to serialPort
. The first argument to open
is the name (owner) for the port, the second argument is the name for the port, and the third argument is the number of milliseconds to wait for the open.
4. Configure the Serial Port
The next three statements call configuration methods on the SerialPort
object serialPort
. The first statement calls setSerialPortParams
to set the baud rate, data bits, stop bits, and parity. The next two statements call setFlowControlMode
to set the flow control, and then enableReceiveTimeout
to set the timeout for receiving data.
setSerialPortParams(serialPort, SerialPort_BAUD_9600,... SerialPort_DATABITS_8, SerialPort_STOPBITS_1,... SerialPort_PARITY_NONE); setFlowControlMode(serialPort, SerialPort_FLOWCTRL_NONE); enableReceiveTimeout(serialPort, 1000);
5. Set Up an Output Stream Writer
The example then calls a constructor to create and open a java.io.OutputStreamWriter
object. The constructor call passes the java.io.OutputStream
object, returned by a call to the getOutputStream
method serialPort
, and assigns the OutputStreamWriter
object to out
.
6. Write Data to Serial Port and Close Output Stream
The example writes a string to the serial port, by calling write
on the object out
. The string is formed by concatenating (with MATLAB [ ] syntax) a command to set the oscilloscope's contrast to 45, with the command terminator that is required by the instrument. The next statement calls flush
on out
to flush the output stream.
Then, the example again calls write
on out
to send another string to the serial port. This string is a query command, to determine the oscilloscope's contrast setting, concatenated with the command terminator. The example then calls close
on the output stream.
7. Open an Input Stream and Determine Number of Bytes to Read
To read the data expected from the oscilloscope in response to the contrast query, the example opens an input stream by calling the static
method, InputStream.getInputStream
, to obtain an InputStream
object for the serial port. Then, the example calls the method available
on the InputStream
object, in
, and assigns the returned number of bytes to numAvail
.
8. Create an Input Stream Reader for the Serial Port
The example then calls a java.io.InputStreamReader
constructor, with the InputStream
object, in
, and assigns the new object to reader
.
9. Read Data from Serial Port and Close Reader
The example reads from the serial port, by calling the read
method on the InputStreamReader
object reader for each available byte. The read
statement uses MATLAB array concatenation to add each newly read byte to the array of bytes already read. After reading the data, the example calls close
on reader
to close the input stream reader.
10. Close the Serial Port
The example closes the serial port, by calling close
on the serialPort
object.
11. Convert Input Argument to a MATLAB Character Array
The last statement of the example uses the MATLAB function, char,
to convert the array input bytes (integers) to an array of characters:
Example - Communicating Through a Serial Port | Running the serialexample Program |
© 1994-2005 The MathWorks, Inc.