Need serial port access for very simple communication

[Riverdome]

I'm fairly new at Perl but have been fighting with SerialPort.pm and Commport.pm for too long now. All I need to do is send a very simple command out of the serial port into an electrical device. A batch file won't work for this project but if it would this is how it would read

MODE COM1: BAUD=96 PARITY=N DATA=8 STOP=1
ECHO T0>COM1
ECHO T1>COM1

Is there a relatively simple way to accomplish this with perl in a Windows environment? If it was much simplier in a unix world I would consider that as well.

 

[tchatzi]

You could start the HyperTerminal from windows and pass your commands from there to your device.

Or you could try

Device::SerialPort (for *nix) from ftp://cpan.org/modules/by-module/Device/Device-SerialPort-1.tar.gz

or

Win32::SerialPort (for Win) from ftp://cpan.org/modules/by-module/Win32/Win32-SerialPort-0.19.tar.gz

Be sure to read the 'readme' file first and then the 'documentation'

I hope these will help.

 

[Riverdome]

Thanks for the reply perluser,

I can successfully achieve this through hyperterm but I guess I didn't elaborate enough in my first post. I need to be able to trigger this event via a button on my webpage, thus I turned to perl. Seemed so simple a month ago but I still don't have an answer. I need to transmit two characters (could be any two from a list of ~20 commands) through the serial port just by clicking the corresponding button on my site. Must use the serial port on the web server (@ home) and not on the client.

 

[PaulTEG]

What OS the webserver?
--Paul

cigless ...

 

[Riverdome]

Paul,

Currently I'm only running MS Pers Web Server. This is a smaller home automation project so up 'til now it has been usable. I'm not tied to PWS and would make changes if I know those changes will help me reach my goal.

 

[PaulTEG]

Can you post some code, obfuscate passwords, hostnames, IP's and anything else that's private

--Paul

cigless ...

 

[Riverdome]

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Win32::SerialPort;
sub openPort($);
sub closePort($);
my $DEVICE = "COM1";
my $serial = openPort ($DEVICE);
$serial->write("T1");
closePort ($serial);
sub openPort($)
{my ($device) = @_;
my $serial = Win32::SerialPort->new ($device, 1);
die "Can't open serial port $serial: $^E\n" unless ($serial);
$serial->user_msg(1);
$serial->databits(8);
$serial->baudrate(19200);
$serial->parity("none");
$serial->stopbits(1);
$serial->handshake("rts");
return $serial;}
sub closePort($)
{
my ($serial) = @_;
$serial->close();}



This script calls the SerialPort.pm module. I obtained SerialPort.pm from CPAN. It calls the CommPort.pm module, also acquired from CPAN. My specific error is actually in the CommPort file, something about FAME HLI missing ~~ sorry don't have that available right now.

After digging into both modules it just seemed like there had to be a way to acomplish this w/o hundreds of lines of code. Maybe not, but thats why I\'m asking

 

[PaulTEG]

RD,

try this, I assume it's a modem you're talking to here, don't have one in this box, sorry can't test

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
 use strict;
 use Win32::SerialPort;
  my $DEVICE = "COM1";
  my $serial = openPort ($DEVICE);
  $serial->write("T1");
  closePort ($serial);

sub openPort {
  my ($device) = @_;
  my $serial = Win32::SerialPort->new ($device, 1);
  die "Can't open serial port $serial: $^E\n" unless $serial;
  $serial->user_msg(1);
  $serial->databits(8);
  $serial->baudrate(19200);
  $serial->parity("none");
  $serial->stopbits(1);
  $serial->handshake("rts");
  return $serial;
}
sub closePort {
  my ($serial) = @_;
  $serial->close();
}

You had multiple declarations of close port, and you were passing $ in parens to the sub - I've never seen this before

It passes a syntax check, but it did before as well, no guarantees

Give it a lash

--Paul

cigless ...

 

[Riverdome]

Paul,

It's actually isn't a modem but I don't think that will matter. Once the "black box" receives the T1 signal it does a function (in this case allows electricity to flow to port T1 thus turning on a light) If I send T0 or T2 it effect different devices within the home. All testing works when I manually use hyperterm or a batch file so I know it's a perl syntax/logic problem. I'll try the new file tonight, Thank You.