From: Axel <a99.googlegroups.a99@...>
Date: 2009-07-01T17:20:11+09:00
Subject: Re: serial port connection

Hello,

I never used serial-port communication with Ruby, but I collected some
informations on this. (It's likely that I'll need it in the future...)

Maybe, the following is usefull for you:

"
  #    ...All I had to do was set a seemingly
  #    arbitrary read_timeout value.  With the timeout,
serialport.gets just returns
  #    whatever was in the input buffer.
"

My collection:

 
###########################################################################
  # 2008-12-08: According to comp.lang.ruby, there is no easy-to-use
library,
  # for serial port usage under windows. But: This should work:
  #   http://grub.ath.cx/win32serial/
  #   which worked fine on my system (Windows XP sp3, using cygwin
ruby, but I
  #   think it'll work with the one-click version of Ruby)
  # Small, but must be compiled first. Compilation made problems,
according to
  # comp.lang.ruby
  #
  # 2009-06-09: Somebody got library working (comp.lang.ruby,
2008-06):
  #    Nevertheless, it seems to be working today!  All I had to do
was set a seemingly
  #    arbitrary read_timeout value.  With the timeout,
serialport.gets just returns
  #    whatever was in the input buffer.
  #
  # Other thread (2008-06):
  #   ...in my experience Ruby serialport library for Windows is in
most cases
  #   not usable. I suppose the problem is Ruby's implementation of
threads
  #   (green threads) under Windows.
  #
  #   For serial communication under windows I now use a
RS-232/422/485
  #   connections over Ethernet (i.e. Ethernet to serial) - so from
windows
  #   (Ruby) perspective I use TCP/IP communication which works fine.

Regards,
Axel