From: barabba <igor.sarzisartori@...>
Date: 2006-09-01T04:00:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Does Ruby have support for serial connections - RS232??

Thomas Beckett wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Chris Finch <christopher.finch@nuth.nhs.uk> wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I would love to stick to Ruby with this problem - but is it possible in
> > Ruby to interface with a device through a RS232 serial connection?
> >
> > I want to connect my Windows XP computer with a medical device through
> > RS232 - get data from the device and send it messages.
> >
> > Any help greatly appreciated,
> > Chris
> >
> > --
> > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> >
> >
>
> ruby-serialport might be what you are looking for:
>
> http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-serialport/
>
> Tom

I have tried ruby-serialport for my win32 project  without success.

In the package there is serialport.so that don't works with my ruby
installation (ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24) [i386-mswin32]).

To compile the file serialport.c in a dll with Visual Studio is not a
problem, if you rember to use #define mswin in the code.  When I tested
my dll with miniterm.rb I get:
(eval):1: (eval):1:in `private_class_method': undefined method `create'
for clas
s `Class' (NameError)
        from (eval):1
        from
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:21:in `re
quire'
        from miniterm.rb:2


On miniterm.rb:2 there is only:
    require "serialport"

I don't know how to fix it, but I have created a simple dll in C++,
that works only in windows, to open a serial port and get some data on
it (there are many free serial implementation that target  win32 in
C++). I have used Swig to export a function to get data.
If you know the module Win32API you don't need to create a dll.