I know this has been done in the past a few times so here's one more. This is a skeletal Visual Basic 2010 and Arduino Sketch that I mixed together to test the PC to Arduino Uno connection via serial. It simply turns LED 13 on or off.
The Visual Basic 2010 code assumes you have Form1 with 2 buttons Button1 and Button2 and SerialPort1 controls. Button1 sends a 1 and Button2 sends a 0 to the serial port COM10 (change this to match your PC to Arduino port setting)
See attached photo of my simple form design.
The Arduino Uno Sketch code simply waits and reads the serial port. If it see 1 it will turn PIN 13 on and if it sees 0 it will turn PIN 13 off. If you have an LED on PIN 13, you can turn it on and off. On the Arduino Uno, PIN 13 is attached to a an on-board LED.
I used COM10 as a serial port but you can (and must) change it to match your Arduino serial port.
The purpose of this code is to simplify explanation of how to connect VB to Arduino. You can add error processing and more intelligence based on your particular needs.
Make sure you drag the Serial Port control icon from the Toolbox onto your form. Access database security cracking. It should have the name SerialPort1
WARNING: On my PC I had to close the Arduino IDE Serial Monitor window while runing the VB program, else I run into all sorts of error message about COM port access denied and the program will fail.
You can download Visual Basic Express 2010 for free from Microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/visual-basic-express
'------------ START OF VB 2010 CODE -----------------
' NOTE: I am using COM10 so you need to change the Visual Basic code to match your COM port
Imports System.IO
Imports System.IO.Ports
Imports System.Threading
Public Class Form1
Shared _continue As Boolean
Shared _serialPort As SerialPort
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
SerialPort1.Close()
SerialPort1.PortName = 'com10' 'change com port to match your Arduino port
SerialPort1.BaudRate = 9600
SerialPort1.DataBits = 8
SerialPort1.Parity = Parity.None
SerialPort1.StopBits = StopBits.One
SerialPort1.Handshake = Handshake.None
SerialPort1.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.Default 'very important!
End Sub
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
SerialPort1.Open()
SerialPort1.Write('1')
SerialPort1.Close()
End Sub
Private Sub Button2_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
SerialPort1.Open()
SerialPort1.Write('0')
SerialPort1.Close()
End Sub
End Class
'------------ END OF VB 2010 CODE -----------------
//------------- START OF ARDUINO SKETCH -----------------
//
// Mixed by: Hazim Bitar
// Based on: Science Guy 14 youTube tutorial http://youtu.be/g0pSfyXOXj8
int ledPin = 13; // the number of the LED pin
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600); // set serial speed
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // set LED as output
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); //turn off LED
}
void loop(){
while (Serial.available() 0); // do nothing if nothing sent
int val = Serial.read() - '0'; // deduct ascii value of '0' to find numeric value of sent number
if (val 1) { // test for command 1 then turn on LED
Serial.println('LED on');
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // turn on LED
}
else if (val 0) // test for command 0 then turn off LED
{
Serial.println('LED OFF');
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); // turn off LED
}
else // if not one of above command, do nothing
{
//val = val;
}
Serial.println(val);
Serial.flush(); // clear serial port
}
//------------- END OF ARDUINO SKETCH -----------------
Python Serial Port Programming
Describes how to access serial and parallel ports by using Visual Basic.NET. Use the MSComm control in Visual Basic.NET to access serial ports. Serial communications for your application by enabling the transmission and reception of data through a serial port. Visual Basic for Applications Serial Port Software Example. For this demonstration we will be using the mscomm32.ocx driver in VBA to control a RS232 serial port and USB virtual serial port that is created with the USB driver installed on your system for our USB products. You are likely to be using a different COM port. The Visual Basic Program. Here is the form. When I try to read serial data from Arduino to Visual Basic I get nothing in the text field. It works fine with Arduino’s own serial monitor, but VB program sees nothin. I’m new to VB and I’m trying developing a VBA application to send.