Serial Port Synchronization in Delphi

Question

I am still having issues with the TComPort component but this time is not the component itself is the logic behind it. I have a device witch sends some ascii strings via ser

Answer 1

Note. Most com-port components do not have a clue when to report back to the owner. Normally the thread that is responsible to gather the bytes from the port is informed by the OS that one or more bytes are ready to be processed. This information is then simply popped up to your level. So when you expect the message to be transferred, you get what the OS is giving you.

You have to buffer all incoming characters in a global buffer. When you get the final character in your message string, handle the message.

Here is an example where the message start is identified with a special character and the end of the message is identified with another character.

If your message is constructed in another way, I'm sure you can figure out how to adapt the code.

var
  finalBuf: AnsiString;

{- Checking message }
Function ParseAndCheckMessage(const parseS: AnsiString) : Integer;
begin
  Result := 0; // Assume ok
  {- Make tests to confirm a valid message }
  ...
end;


procedure TMainForm.ComPortRxChar(Sender: TObject; Count: Integer);
var
  i,err: Integer;
  strBuf: AnsiString;
begin
  ComPort.ReadStr(strBuf, Count);
  for i := 1 to Length(strBuf) do
    case strBuf[i] of
      '$' : 
        finalBuf := '$';  // Start of package
      #10 :
        begin
          if (finalBuf <> '') and (finalBuf[1] = '$') then  // Simple validate check 
            begin
              SetLength( finalBuf, Length(finalBuf) - 1); // Strips CR
              err := ParseAndCheckMessage(finalBuf);
              if (err = 0) then 
                {- Handle validated string }
              else
                {- Handle error } 
            end;
          finalBuf := '';
        end; 
    else
      finalBuf := finalBuf + strBuf[i];  
    end;
end;