Data Sheet

dScript

dScript User Manual v2.15

Reading data from a serial port

The "Read" command is used to read serial data, the syntax is:

mySerialPortName.Read( <string name>, <start position>, <number of bytes to read>)

Data read from the serial port is placed in a string - think of it as a byte array holding your

incoming data. The following program will read and display the firmware version number of the

LCD05.

S1[0] = 15 ; LCD05 command to read firmware version

LCD05.Write(s1,0,1) ; send it

threadsleep 5 ; wait for data to arrive

LCD05.Read(s1,0,1) ; get it.

C = s1[0]

s1 = " LCD05 V" + C ; format for display – note the two leading spaces

s1[0] = 2 ; for the set cursor command

s1[1] = 41

LCD05.Write(s1,0,s1.Length) ; display the version number

The number of data bytes available in the receive buffer can be read with

serialport.BytesToRead. Instead of sleeping for 5mS we could have written:

C = LCD05.BytesToRead ; get number of bytes in receive buffer

while C < 1

There are two serial port transmit buffer parameters:

BytesToWrite will return the number of data bytes in the transmit buffer that are still to be

transmitted.

serialport.BytesAvailable will return the number of free bytes in the transmit buffer that you

can write to.