detecting the Arduino serial port

[Rik]

Is there a way to detect the serial port (number) of an Arduino board?
For that I would need to know not only the number but also the "name" of the available serial ports, as shown in the Windows Device Manager (see attached image).
For numbers I can use the SerialPort.GetPortNames method, but how to get the names?

Thanks,

Rik

[MarkMLl]

Is there a way to detect the serial port (number) of an Arduino board?
For that I would need to know not only the number but also the "name" of the available serial ports, as shown in the Windows Device Manager (see attached image).
For numbers I can use the SerialPort.GetPortNames method, but how to get the names?

I can't speak for Windows, but for Linux there are various properties in the /sys tree which can be parsed with reasonable reliability to select a specified piece of hardware.

MarkMLl

[avra]

On Windows you can try to use WMI to get list of all ports. One of the examples from the net uses:

Code: SQL  [Select][+][-]

1. SELECT * FROM Win32_PnPEntity WHERE Name LIKE '%COM%'

You could check if that is sufficient or you need something else.

[MarkMLl]

Although it might be necessary to look a bit more deeply than that. The things that I'm using (on Linux) is the name of the loaded driver and the chip name, in addition for /some/ hardware (FTDI) you can write a serial number to the interface chip which means that after that you can track which port it's on even if moved.

[marcov]

See also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16100798/serial-com-ports-name-or-identification

[Cityalex]

Really thank you That brought about such good stories to be spoken agai

[Rik]

Thanks to all for responding.
Meanwhile I found something more or less useful at http://patotech.blogspot.com/2012/04/enumerate-com-ports-in-windows-with.html
The function GetComPortList returns the friendly names, but it shows only the "real" serial ports, not the ones that go via USB such as the Arduino board.

Rik