How do I get VB.Net to use WriteByte()

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Hi There,
Monday morning confusion again! In VB.Net (VS 2008) is WriteByte supported? MSDN says Yes,
The Serial Port go-to book Serial Port Complete 2nd Ed by Jan Axelson says Yes, but the IDE reports WriteByte is not a member of 'System.IO.Ports.SerialPort'. One way I can do it is
to convert the Ascii chars to there equivalent decimal and send them via a Com port write like the following

VB

Dim ByteToSend As Byte

       ByteToSend(0) = 49
       ByteToSend(1) = 48
       ByteToSend(3) = 48

and send this with a:

VB

myComPort.Write(ByteToSend, 0, 3)

This however generates the following error

Expression is not an array or a method, and cannot have an argument list.

Huh? What I am trying to do is send "100" to a device on a serial port that wont seem to respond to a Write/WriteLine. Aggah!

Posted 16-Feb-14 23:42pm

glennPattonWork3

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phil.o · Answer 1 · 2014-02-16T23:50:00

Solution 2

Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks like trivial.

VB

Dim ByteToSend As New Byte(3)
ByteToSend(0) = 49
ByteToSend(1) = 48
ByteToSend(2) = 48
myComPort.Write(ByteToSend, 0, 3)

Or these were just typos and I'm completely off-subject.
Anyway, hope this helps.

Posted 16-Feb-14 23:50pm

phil.o

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glennPattonWork3 17-Feb-14 5:53am

Thanks!, Griff beat you to it!

OriginalGriff · Answer 2 · 2014-02-16T23:47:00

Solution 1

No, it doesn't!
There is no WriteByte method in the SerialPort class: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/System.IO.Ports.SerialPort_methods(v=vs.110).aspx[^]
There is a Write method that accepts an array of bytes, but there is no specific method to send a single byte value.

What you need to do is modify the declaration of ByteToSend:

VB

Dim ByteToSend(3) As Byte

So it is an array, rather than a single byte.

Posted 16-Feb-14 23:47pm

OriginalGriff

Comments

glennPattonWork3 17-Feb-14 5:54am

Face + Palm, I was going by the book Serial Port Complete 2nd Ed by Jan Axelson on page 164 WriteByte is down as a command...

OriginalGriff 17-Feb-14 6:08am

What? You believed a *book* over the internet? :laugh:

glennPattonWork3 17-Feb-14 6:11am

Couldn't use the Net PC booting, however have got around issue I think!