I have a WinCE device which I'm trying to use as the endpoint of a bluetooth serial connection (e.g. so that I can initiate a connection from my PC). I am doing the following:

 _BluetoothSerialPort port = BluetoothSerialPort.CreateServer(InTheHand.Net.Bluetooth.BluetoothService.SerialPort);
 Console.Out.WriteLine("BTSerialConnnection virtual com port is " +
    port.PortName + " " + " " + port.Service + " " + port.Local);           

This code succeeds as desired, and I see that the portName is "COM0". I then try to open a SerialPort as follows:
 
SerialPort serialPort = new SerialPort(port.PortName, 38400);
serialPort.Open();

 
The Open() call fails with the following eror, "The port 'COM0:' does not exist". Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

    

I'm sorry that I can't help; I've no experience with PPC/CE.  Peter's away on holiday just now so if noone can help hopefully Peter'll be able to help when he gets back.

Does the Handle property look valid? It's possible that the allocation failed, because COM0 is the last port it will try to allocate. I haven't checked through the code yet to see if this is likely.

Peter

The handle is 0, which is I assume is not valid.

Does the device have any virtual serial ports which can be allocated through the user interface and are these already in use - it's possible they are already allocated and there are no spare ports.

Hi Peter,

I have the same problem as kebbs. The returned COM is 0. I've also tried creating a virtual COM port using WIN32 RegisterDevice, but I didn't get any valid handles.

What is the UI component you are refering to? I have an MDA PRO running WM5 and couldn't find any UI menu to analyze ports.

Thanks in adavnce,

 Johannes
 

On WM5 the virtual serial ports are found in the Bluetooth settings applet on the COM Ports tab e.g.

Start > Settings > Connections > Bluetooth > COM Ports

See if you can create a port manually here. I'm working on updating the code to better co-exist with this control panel (so the UI reflects the virtual com ports that are created)

Peter

Peter- I have a very similar problem, see http://inthehand.com/forums/p/1261/4682.aspx#4682 Any ideas? Thanks, Andy

Hi Andy

Have you tried using the control panel to do the creation manually?  Does that work?

I think much of this is dependent on how the OEM sets the device up.  We use the facility described at http://blogs.msdn.com/cenet/archive/2005/08/18/453150.aspx  And if it doesn't work then we won't work either.  Do you have the btd.dll file mentioned there for instance (not that I know how this all works)?

Do the error codes returned by our call to RegisterDevice make any sense?

Alan

Alan- Thanks for the reply.

>>Have you tried using the control panel to do the creation manually?

Good point. When I go to Settings | Connections | Bluetooth on the COM port tab, there is nothing in the list box.

Usually, I would see "New incoming port" on other devices.

I tried using "Make this device visible to other devices" (is this necessary?), but no change.

By checking the registry at "SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Bluetooth\\Serial\\Ports\\SupportedPorts", I see that COM0-COM9 are available.

>>Do the error codes returned by our call to RegisterDevice make any sense?

I haven't used it as source code for a while, only the DLL. I will load up the source code again and write back on the results.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Andy

I think you need to talk to the OEM or to MSFT.  Maybe open a case at one of them -- they may charge though; MSFT would (correctly?) says its the OEM's fault in setting-up the device.

You could try posting a question at the cenet blog, they were looking for things to write about, see "Since I'm running out of things to write about" at http://blogs.msdn.com/cenet/archive/2008/01/08/the-history-of-the-dcom-remoting-addon-pack.aspx  You can say the we (the library and its forums) get *lots* of question about this not working...