Open Serial Port using C

I am using an AL5A Robotic arm. I would like to open the serial port using the C++ programming.

My group partner and I have tried to look for a command to open the serial port. But in vain. We can do it in Matlab where we define and use the command serial to open the serial port as:

S= serial('COM1', 'BaudRate', 115200);
fopen(S);
A=[35 48 80 49 49 53 55 84 48 48 48 13];
fprintf(S, A);

Those are the ASCII codes we need to send to the Servo motors of the robotic arm.

I was wondering if there's a similar way of doing it in C++? If so, how? and what header files do we need? Please let me know.

Thanks.

Assuming you're talking about using COM port on Windows.

Code:

---

HANDLE hCom = CreateFile("COM1", GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE/* as needed */, 0 /*must be exclusive*/, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING /* has to be this value */, 0, NULL);

DCB dcb;
ZeroMemory(&dcb, sizeof(dcb));
dcb.DCBlength = sizeof(DCB);
if ( GetCommState(hCom, &dcb) )
{
  // Set as needed
  dcb.BaudRate = CBR_57600;   
  dcb.ByteSize = 8;     
  dcb.Parity = NOPARITY;
  dcb.StopBits = ONESTOPBIT;

  SetCommState(hCom, &dcb);
}

---

you can then use ReadFile/WriteFile to read/write to the com port.

Don't forget to close the handle or the com port might be locked from further use.


Error handling has been left out of the above example to keep it short.