Sorry, I missed the destination address of the "reply" - here is my reply to
Patrick.

> I am no expert, but I have recently written some VB code
> with MSCOMM using the Binary mode, and I have both Jan
> Axelson's book (Serial Port Complete) and Richard Grier's
> book (Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications)
> - and I have at a couple of your books too, I might add! :-)
> Anyway, I'd just like to point out that working with MSCOMM
> in binary mode means both the input and output bytes are stored
> in variants that contain byte arrays.
>
> Please correct me if I am wrong, but it looks like in your
> example the mode is actually text, not binary.

Yes - because I find a text string easier to work with than a byte array.

Sorry, I should have put that in the original email.

> InputMode can be a 1 or 0, with 0 being comInputModeText,
> and 1 comInputModeBinary. So if you want to work with binary,
> I think you would just use the constant comInputModeBinary.
>
> You would also store your output data in an array and then
> give the array to MSCOMM like this, perhaps:
>   Dim aOutput(0 to 1) as Byte
>   Dim Buffer as Variant
>   aOutput(0) = &H14 'A byte to send
>   aOutput(1) = &H15 'A second byte
>   Buffer = aOutput
>   MSComm1.Output = Buffer
>
> To receive data, you would then do a similar setup:
>   Dim aInput(0 to 1) as Byte
>   Dim Buffer as Variant
>   Buffer = MSComm1.Input
>   aInput() = Buffer
>
> I like using binary because then I can check the InBufferCount
> value to determine when to read the input buffer.

The difference with Text is that you can append data to a String and not
worry about the variable conversions that you have to do with the binary
data.  The "InputBufferCount" works for both Binary and Text data.

> As far as displaying the analog data graphically, have you
> looked at S-Plot Pro? <http://www.selmaware.com/s-plot>
> I haven't used it myself. I'd be curious to hear what
> solution you come up with for graphically displaying your
> data.

No I haven't see this.  I'm disappointed that there aren't any PICmicro
examples I can try out.

If I am going to display analog data graphically, I generally use a
PictureBox along with an algorithmically calculated "Line" parameter to
display the data.  It's quite fast and very easy to do.

myke

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