Customer Reviews

Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Needed to write a VB6.0 program to communicate with ten (10) temperature controllers via RS485. Also wrote an ActiveX dll in VB6.0 to communicate to an Electrocraft Servo Drive Controller. This book helped immensely in both of those tasks. If you need examples of how to use the MSCOMM control, this book is it!

As a VB programmer for 4 years, the last 2 spent working with various instruementation devices, serial comms is a MUST KNOW area for me. This book has been my main port of call for any serial comms issue that I have come accross. Although at this stage it is rarely moved from my book shelf, that is only because its knowledge is lodged firmly in my head. Excellent book. Well Done.

I am always pleasantly surprised by the number of people in thetechnical world who take the time to summarize their knowledge andshare it with others. Dick Grier has done a fine job of getting together information that ties serial communications and Visual Basic together. If you are a novice to intermediate user of either serial communications or Visual Basic (in my case, I am a novice VB programmer), the book will provide sufficient info to get you "over the top". Modems, terminal emulators, loggers, GPS interfacing and telephony are some of the areas that are covered. You may find a sample app that fits just what you are trying to accomplish. To facilitate moving beyond the information the book provides, Dick has included a list that covers lots of additional resources for data.

Dick Grier is a proven expert in the field of serial communications and Visual Basic as documented by his peer-support contributions in both the VB Compuserve forum and VB Microsoft Newsgroups over the years. His book, "Visual Basic Programmer's Guide To Serial Communications" is well structured and well written including a serial communications primer, Modem FAQ (and answers), and the ins and outs of implementing data communications using all versions of Visual Basic (2.0 - 5.0) . Coverage includes intricacies (and code examples) of the Visual Basic MSComm control, and discussions relating to the use of the Windows data communications API and Visual Basic. If you are involved in any type of Visual Basic related serial communications development I would highly recommend this book

I'm an advanced beginner at Visual Basic. I am in the middle of a project that requires me to connect a few machines together through serial ports. Needless to say, I was in over my head. Note that I "was" in over my head. With Grier's book in hand I am not. This book is a life saver! It shows exactly what and how to communicate via serial ports, modems, pagers and more.

If you are in the midst of a VB telecomm project and keepgettingstung by unexpected "gotcha"s, you need this book. If you are using a VB "control" like PDQComm for the first time, and are confused by the documentation, you need this book. If your program works, but you want to improve its stability and ease of use, you need this book.

Dick Grier has spent a lot of time answering question about modems and serial communications on CompuServe, and this book distills a great deal of the knowledge he has accumulated. There is no "filler" here, just massively useful information that can be applied to any serial communications project. I am not aware of any other book in print that covers serial communications in such an easy to understand, straightforward manner. There's even some exotic stuff about using Global Position Finders that I find extremely intriguing. All of the code examples are in VB3/VB4, but you should have no difficulty "porting" the methods to VB5.

Two caveats: First off, this is NOT a "Visual Basic for Dummies" book; you should not expect half the book to be a tutorial on the fundamentals of programming. It is about designing reliable Visual Basic code for serial communications, nothing else. (And it covers the topic admirably.) Secondly, you may hear unfavorable comments on this book, based on the first printing. The initial printing of the book had some unfortunate typesetting errors, which turned some of the text into gibberish. This has been corrected in subsequent printings and the copy that I have. If in doubt, check section 5.1.1. If the code example has lines beginning with "im" instead of the correct "Dim", you have a copy from print run #1.

But what do I REALLY think about this book? When Dick Grier finishes his next book, I'll be waiting in line to buy it.

I bought this book while trying to build a project which was basically a modem terminal like those we used to access BBS in those old days before the internet. I knew a lot about modem terminals, I was comfortable with modems, but VB 6 was new to me, so, it just wasn't easy. Richard's book helped a lot, I did end up building a fairly decent terminal. It might be true that the book is a bit oriented to modems, but you will also find information that will be useful in several other projects.

It was a pity that the author did not include a better version of the terminal. He does, however, include several components which you can use, modem LED lights, a init string selector etc. Would have been nice to see it all working together, but we can learn while trying to do it ourselves.

Also, I was very impressed with Richard's help. Here's an author that prints his email in the book, and actually replies to it very quickly. Richard was very helpful clearing some of my questions and even sent me some code. Excellent.

Buy it if you need help with modems and VB 6, and strongly think about buying it if you don't use modems but need any serial port action with VB.

This is an excellent, excellent reference for using serial ports with VB. I can't say enough for this book. The author knows his material and communicates his knowledge very well. I am using it to write a communications program to interface with field devices using the modbus protocol. The book doesn't specifically cover modbus, but I still found this book to be very helpful. Again, excellent!

This book covered the need to know level of serial programming for VB. Sure, if your a protocol developer, you may want something else, but for the 90% VB market, this is it.

One thing that i like in this book is the author's recommendation on how to optimize the serial communication program in terms of program execution speed. However, i do not like the way source codes are pointed out. Some codes are shaded gray and it took me time to find which code is being explained. Each line of code should have been numbered. Additionally, the book may need to add some more pages that will walk the reader through a small most common serial comm project from "scratch to finish". Overall, this book is a good reference.