How to detect a serial port arrival/removal (USB Virtual comport) using c#

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I am trying to auto detect a USB serial port arrival/removal. I can detect any device change using the overloaded WndProc method but I need more information about the device.
It seems you can do this by using the LParam to point to a device structure, maybe, DEV_BROADCAST_HDR or other.

The event 'DBT_DEVTYP_PORT' does not seem to be the device type that is detected in my code, 'DBT_DEVTYP_DEVICEINTERFACE' is the one I am getting. My code below shows how far I have got. I am new to C# so please be patient.

C#

protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
{
    if (m.Msg == WM_DEVICE_CHANGE)
    {
        switch (m.WParam.ToInt32())
        {
            case DBT_DEVICE_ARRIVAL:
            {
                DEV_BROADCAST_HDR hdr = (DEV_BROADCAST_HDR)m.GetLParam(typeof(DEV_BROADCAST_HDR));
                switch (hdr.DeviceType)
                {
                    case DBT_DEVTYP_DEVICEINTERFACE:
                    {
                        string portName = Marshal.PtrToStringUni( (IntPtr)(m.LParam.ToInt32() + Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(DEV_BROADCAST_PORT_Fixed))) );
                        MessageBox.Show("Port '" + portName + "' arrived.");
                        break;
                    }
                }
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    base.WndProc(ref m);
}

The code above gives me the GUID of the device detected but I need more information.

Any ideas?

Dave

Posted 14-Oct-15 23:01pm

krikkidoddle

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Jochen Arndt · Answer 1 · 2015-10-14T23:26:00

I have done this with C++ but the messages and parameters can be handled similar with C#.

There will be specific messages for serial and parallel ports:

Check that LPARAM is not NULL
Cast the LPARAM to PDEV_BROADCAST_PORT
Check if the dbcp_devicetype member is DBT_DEVTYP_PORT
Check the dbcp_name member if it begins with 'COM'. It contains the serial port name as COMx.

The above messages are send with DBT_DEVICEARRIVAL and DBT_DEVICEREMOVECOMPLETE upon insertion / removal.

Use the detected serial port name to retrieve additional information about the serial port.

krikkidoddle · Answer 2 · 2015-10-15T04:12:00

Thanks for the reply.

1) LPARAM is not null and so there is data to point to.

2) As you can see LPARAM has been cast to DEV_BROADCAST_HDR which is just a structure to hold the data.

3) The device type is not 'DBT_DEVTYP_PORT', I get the value 5 which seems to be 'DBT_DEVTYP_DEVICEINTERFACE'.

I have debugged it to the device type and it does detect my USB serial device as stated earlier but I stuck here.

How to detect a serial port arrival/removal (USB Virtual comport) using c#

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