Reading Serial Data from an Arduino in C#

Projects Interfacing w/ Software on the Computer
1

I just thought I'd post this here for anyone who's interested - Tutorial on how to read serial data from Arduino in C#.

This is something I wanted to be able to do a little while ago but couldn't find any tutorials, so I created my own! It's just a simple console application which reads characters printed to the serial from an Arduino. It can be integrated with code to write characters to the serial from C#, to enable two way communication between the Arduino and the C# program.

Enjoy :slight_smile:

2

Thanks for sharing,

Could you post a (minimal) C# file as an example? Every few weeks it is asked for.

3

I have one that I send to anyone that asks. It posts a Windows form and has proper threading to deal with the serial port in one thread and the user interface in another thread. It's a bit long to post here, and requires a number of files that in general don't need to be looked at but do need to be present. Getting them all in the right place from a series of forum posts is challenging.

I've attached it to this post.

CommunicateWithArduino.zip (50.8 KB)

4

PaulS, your code is very nice, with a good interface - it looks a lot better than a console application! If anyone just wants to read data from an Arduino though, and are happy with the console application, the following code is much shorter and to the point:

       //Code to read serial data. Find out more at http://www.therobotlab.co.uk/2011/read-serial-c-sharp-arduino-tutorial/.
       //-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       //Set up the serial port. Use the following values for an Arduino, changing "COM3" to your own Serial Port.
        SerialPort sp = new SerialPort("COM3", 9600, Parity.None, 8, StopBits.One);
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //Open the Program function
            new Program();
        }

        private Program()
        {
            //Set the datareceived event handler
            sp.DataReceived += new SerialDataReceivedEventHandler(sp_DataReceived);
            //Open the serial port
            sp.Open();
            //Read from the console, to stop it from closing.
            Console.Read();
        }

        private void sp_DataReceived(object sender, SerialDataReceivedEventArgs e)
        {
            //Write the serial port data to the console.
            Console.Write(sp.ReadExisting());
        }