Serial port in Compact framework - RTSEnable and DtrEnable - compact-framework

How are RTSEnable and DtrEnable used? I am finding that some balances can communicate with my app but others can't even though the settings match. (baud rate, parity, data bits, stop bits and handshake)
The serial port settings are saved in the configurations file and the idea is to support different combinations of the possible settings, if needed. Normally, our devices are programmed to have handshake = NONE, but in case some odd device can't have handshake=NONE, should I insert a condition such as:
if (serialport.Handshake != NONE) {
serialport.RTSEnable = true;
serialport.DtrEnable = true;
}
Or rather, will other handshakes (other than NONE) work without RTSEnable and DtrEnable being set to true?

Whether or not hardware handshaking is required is based solely on the serial device you're attaching to. You would have to read the OEM specs for the device and see if the device needs handshaking and if it needs any special handling of RTS or DTR.

Related

USB - MTP/PTP without Interrupt Endpoint

Since we plan to use MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) for your next device, we evaluate the use of MTP as replacement for the current (unstable) USB drivers in the current released device.
The limitation on this device is, that its processor (Strong Arm) supports only up to 3 EndPoints:
"Serial port 0 is a universal serial bus device controller (UDC) that supports three endpoints and can operate half-duplex at a baud rate of 12 Mbps (slave only, not a host or hub controller)."
But according to the specification, MTP needs at least 4 endpoints (from the PTP spec):
"The device shall contain at least four endpoints: default, Data-In, Data-Out, and an Interrupt endpoint."
Now the question: Can we just skip the interrupt endpoint on the device? I know that it violates the specification - but what happens if we do?
From our current evaluation software I can see the following scenarios:
The 'space available' is not updated - the user will see that there is 100Mb of free memory, but placing a 1Mb file gives the error "Not Enough Memory"
Non-host driven actions are not visible on the host (so when on the device files are deleted, created or moved, the connected host does not know about it)
If we can live with it, is it advisable to implement it this way?
UPDATE: Damn... when I tested it last time, I ve just removed the code for interrupt-EP data transmission. Now I also removed the endpoint definition (I do not create the endpoint anymore) and from this point the MTP connection couldn't be established any more :(
It seems that the windows driver (wpd) requires the interrupt endpoint - even if it's not used. Bad luck...
Has anyone an idea, whether and how to get MTP working with 3 endpoints?
Finally I got an answer from Microsoft:
The 3-endpoints setup is not supported.
The interrupt endpoint is required so that the driver can receive MTP events from the device. These events are a notification mechanism that the driver relies on to relay events to applications (e.g. when an object is created, updated, or removed).
If your device does nothing with the endpoint (i.e. send no events), applications such as Explorer will not behave correctly whenever objects on your device are changed.
So we buried our plans... :(

tcp stream replay tool

I'm looking for a tool for recording and replaying one side of a TCP stream for testing.
I see tools which record the entire TCP stream (both server and client) for testing firewalls and such, but what I'm looking for is a tool which would record just the traffic submitted by the client (with timing information) and then resubmit it to the server for testing.
Due to the way that TCP handles retransmissions, sequence numbers, SACK and windowing this could be a more difficult task than you imagine.
Typically people use tcpreplay for packet replay; however, it doesn't support synchronizing TCP sequence numbers. Since you need to have a bidirectional TCP stream, (and this requires synchronization of seq numbering) use one of the following options:
If this is a very interactive client / server protocol, you could use scapy to strip out the TCP contents of your stream, parse for timing and interactivity. Next use this information, open a new TCP socket to your server and deserialize that data into the new TCP socket. Parsing the original stream with scapy could be tricky, if you run into TCP retransmissions and windowing dynamics. Writing the bytes into a new TCP socket will not require dealing with sequence numbering yourself... the OS will take care of that.
If this is a simple stream and you could do without timing (or want to insert timing information manually), you can use wireshark to get the raw bytes from a TCP steam without worrying about parsing with scapy. After you have the raw bytes, write these bytes into a new TCP socket (accounting for interactivity as required). Writing the bytes into a new TCP socket will not require dealing with sequence numbering yourself... the OS will take care of that.
If your stream is strictly text (but not html or xml) commands, such as a telnet session, an Expect-like solution could be easier than the aforementioned parsing. In this solution, you would not open a TCP socket directly from your code, using expect to spawn a telnet (or whatever) session and replay the text commands with send / expect. Your expect library / underlying OS would take care of seq numbering.
If you're testing a web service, I suspect it would be much easier to simulate a real web client clicking through links with Selenium or Splinter. Your http library / underlying OS would take care of seq numbering in the new stream.
Take a look at WirePlay code.google.com/p/wireplay or github.com/abhisek/wireplay which promises to replay either client or server side of a captured TCP session with modification of all the SYN/ACK sequence numbers as required.
I don't know if there are any binary builds available, you'll need to compile it yourself.
Note I have not tried this myself yet, but am looking into it.
Yes, it is a difficult task to implement such a tool.
I started to implement this kind of tool two years ago and the tool is mature now.
Try it and maybe you will find that it is the tool that you are looking for.
https://github.com/wangbin579/tcpcopy
I wanted something similar so I worked with scapy for a bit and came up with a solution that worked for me. My goal was to replay the client portion of a captured pcap file. I was interested in getting responses from the server - not necessarily with timings. Below is my scapy solution - it is by no means tested or complete but it did what I wanted it to do. Hopefully it's a good example of how to replay a TCP stream using scapy.
from scapy.all import *
import sys
#NOTE - This script assumes that there is only 1 TCP stream in the PCAP file and that
# you wish to replay the role of the client
#acks
ACK = 0x10
#client closing the connection
RSTACK = 0x14
def replay(infile, inface):
recvSeqNum = 0
first = True
targetIp = None
#send will put the correct src ip and mac in
#this assumes that the client portion of the stream is being replayed
for p in rdpcap(infile):
if 'IP' in p and 'TCP' in p:
ip = p[IP]
eth = p[Ether]
tcp = p[TCP]
if targetIp == None:
#figure out the target ip we're interested in
targetIp = ip.dst
print(targetIp)
elif ip.dst != targetIp:
# don't replay a packet that isn't to our target ip
continue
# delete checksums so that they are recalculated
del ip.chksum
del tcp.chksum
if tcp.flags == ACK or tcp.flags == RSTACK:
tcp.ack = recvSeqNum+1
if first or tcp.flags == RSTACK:
# don't expect a response from these
sendp(p, iface=inface)
first=False
continue
rcv = srp1(p, iface=inface)
recvSeqNum = rcv[TCP].seq
def printUsage(prog):
print("%s <pcapPath> <interface>" % prog)
if __name__ == "__main__":
if 3 != len(sys.argv):
printUsage(sys.argv[0])
exit(1)
replay(sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2])
Record a packet capture of the full TCP client/server communication. Then, you can use tcpliveplay to replay just the client side of the communication to a real server. tcpliveplay will generate new sequence numbers, IP addresses, MAC addresses, etc, so the communication will flow properly.

Mac Application - Disable specific USB port

There is any way to I disable/enable a specific USB Port with my application ?
I'm not aware of any way to do this from user space, and even within the kernel it could be tricky: I think you would need to install a dummy I/O Kit driver which matches all USB devices and/or interfaces. This could be tricky as existing drivers would take precedence, so you'd need to work around that. Once matched, you would check the port in the driver's probe() method and return true if it was one of the disallowed ports. This would stop other drivers from grabbing the device, which would essentially disable it.

Send and receive data simultaneously on Parallel Port

If I understand the parallel port right, sending data from (D0 to D7) simultaneous, but that it can control the sticks individually?
example:
D0 = Input
D1 = Input
D2 = Output
...
...
...
D7 = Input
would it work?
what I want to do is to both send and receive data simultaneously.
Data wires (D0-D7) are being read or set simultaneously. For various tecniques for bidirectional I/O read the attached articles:
Standard parallel port: http://www.beyondlogic.org/spp/parallel.htm
EPP: http://www.beyondlogic.org/epp/epp.htm
ECP: http://www.beyondlogic.org/ecp/ecp.htm
This site is a good source for programming the parallel port.
The basic idea is that you need a DLL, add-on or library that allows you to access the I/O Ports of the PC. For Windows XP on up you need a specific driver that will allow you do this as the OS doesn't offer access out of the box.
The Parallel port will generally reside at one of three address 278,378, 3BC. This port. have the bytes you are reading or writing.
The (base)+1 port allows access to the status bytes. IE. 279,379, 3BD
The (base)+2 port allows access to the control bytes. IE. 27A,37A,3BE
The parallel port documentation will tell not only how to implement the common modes (like bi-directional) but how to control the port at the byte level to implement your own custom.
Back in the day there was only the standard mode available. You pump out your bytes at the (base) port. Some application, like mine, manipulated individual bits of that ports as form of cheap Digital I/O Controller. We did use the status and control bytes as additional inputs and outputs. There were commands you can send to the Parallel Port chip configure the modes precisely.
Today there are are hundreds of sites with example of using the Parallel Port to solve all kinds of problems. I would be surprised that one of doesn't have something you can use for you specific application.
Again the book I recommend starting with is Parallel Port complete. It tells just about everything you need to start with. If your application is too esoteric for that book it will give a springboard from which you can find the exact setup you need.
Of course by sending a number that has just the required bit set (2n) you'd get the expected result.
I'm not sure about bidirectional access though. I guess it's achieved by using control pins along with the data pins but that's just a guess.
Parallel ports doing EPP or ECP only allow D0-D7 to be all input or all output. Trying to do otherwise may fry your hardware.
See http://www.nor-tech.com/solutions/dox/ieee1284_parallel_ports.pdf, page 6.
However, parallel ports have several control lines that may be useful if you only need a small amount of input/output in the "other" direction.
I believe its bit 5 in the port's control register (base address + 2) that switches direction. (no hardware line attached)

Compact Framework serial port and balance

So, to open up a serial port and successfully transmit data from the balance through the serial port, i need to make sure that the settings on the serialPort object match the actual settings of the balance.
Now, the question is how do i detect that the connection hasn't been established due to the settings being different? No exception is thrown by serialPort.Open to indicate that the connection has been established. Yes, the settings are valid, but if they don't match the device (balance) settings; I am in the dark as to why the weight off the balance is not being captured.
Any input here?
Without knowing any more information on the format of the data you expect from your balance, only general serial port settings mismatch detection techniques are applicable.
If the UART settings are significantly incorrect, you'll likely see a lot of framing errors: when the UART is expecting a 1 stop bit, it will in fact see a 0. You can detect this with the ErrorReceived event on the port.
private void OnErrorReceived(object sender, SerialErrorReceivedEventArgs e)
{
if ((e.EventType & SerialError.Frame) == SerialError.Frame)
{
// your settings don't match, try something else
}
}
If things are close, but still incorrect, the .NET serial port object may not even give you an error (that is, until something catastrophic occurs).
My most common serial port communication failure occurs due to mismatched baud rates. If you have a message that you know you can get an 'echo' for, try that as part of a handshaking effort. Perhaps the device you're connecting to has a 'status' message. No harm will come from requesting it, and you will find out if communication is flowing correctly.
For software handshaking (xon xoff) There's very little you can do to detect whether or not it's configured right. The serial port object can do anything from ignore it completely to have thread exception errors, depending on the underlying serial port driver implementation. I've had serial port drivers that completely ignore xon/xoff, and pass the characters straight into the program - yikes!
For hardware handshaking, the basic echo strategy for baud rate may work, depending on how your device works. If you know that it will do hardware handshaking, you may be able to detect it and turn it on. If the device requires hardware handshaking and it's not on, you may get nothing, and vice versa.
Another setting that's more rarely used is the DTR pin - data terminal ready. Some serial devices require that this be asserted (ie, set to true) to indicate that it's time to start sending data. It's set to false by default; give toggling it a whirl.
Note that the serial port object is ... finicky. While not necessarily required, I would consider closing the port before you make any changes.
Edit:
Thanks to your comments, it looks like this is your device. It says the default settings should be:
1200 baud
Odd parity
1 stop bit
Hardware handshaking
It doesn't specify how many data bits, but the device says it supports 7 and 8. I'd try both of those. It also says it supports 600, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, and 19200 baud.
If you've turned on hardware handshaking, enabled DTR (different things) and cycled through all the different baud rates, there's a good chance that it's not your settings. It could be that the serial cable that's being used may be wired incorrectly for your device. Some serial cables are 'passthrough' cables, where the 1-9 pins on one side match exactly with the 1-9 pins on the other. Then, you have 'crossover' cables, where the "TX" and "RX" cables are switched (so that when one side transmits, the other side receives, a very handy cable.)
Consider looking at the command table in the back of the manual there; there's a "print software version" command you could issue to get some type of echo back.
Serial ports use a very, very old communications technology that use a very, very old protocol called RS-232. This is pretty much as simple as it gets... the two end points have synchronized clocks and they test the line voltage every clock cycle to see if it is high or low (with high meaning 0 and low meaing 1, which is the opposite of most conventions... again an artifact of the protocol's age). The clock synchronization is accomplished through the use of stop bits, which are really just rest time in between bytes. There are also a few other things thrown into the more advanced uses of the protocol such as parity bits, XON/XOFF, etc, but those all ride on top of this very basic communication layer. Detecting a mismatch of the clocks on each end of the serial line is going to be nearly impossible -- you'll just get incorrect data on the recieving end. The protocol itself has no way built in to identify this situation. I am unaware of any serial driver that is smart enough to notice the input data being clocked an an inappropriate frequency. If you're using one of the error detection schemes such as parity bits, probabilistically every byte will be declared an error. In short, the best you can do is check the incoming data for errors (parity errors should be detected by your driver/software layer, whereas errors in the data received by your app from that layer will need to be checked by your program -- the latter can be assisted by the use of checksums).