4 replies to this topic

[Szymon]

Hi, In the tech specs the digital pins 7-8 are labeled as UART 2 RTS, and CTS. I'm thinking to use it with XBee since the RTS and CTS is nicely available on the header in adafruit's xbee adapter that I'm using. But I'm not sure how to enable the hardware flow control. I looked at the SerialPort class and don't see any options in the constructor or otherwise. Did I missed something here? Thanks, -Szymon

[CW2]

Have a look at SerialPort.Handshake property.

[greg]

Hi,
In the tech specs the digital pins 7-8 are labeled as UART 2 RTS, and CTS. I'm thinking to use it with XBee since the RTS and CTS is nicely available on the header in adafruit's xbee adapter that I'm using. But I'm not sure how to enable the hardware flow control. I looked at the SerialPort class and don't see any options in the constructor or otherwise. Did I missed something here?

Thanks,
-Szymon

Any particular reason you want hardware flow control? Aside from burning two more pins it's almost never necessary for the applications we're doing. Unless you're really concerned about losing a byte here and there.

[Szymon]

Have a look at SerialPort.Handshake property.

Thanks CW2, it didn't occured to me that this property would be related. However there is only Handshake.RequestToSend (RTS) value, so should I assume it will enable CTS as well?

@greg
Probably I don't need it right now, but asked out of curiosity since it was mentioned in Netduino tech spec. I'm also reading the documentation for XBee module that mentioned flow control (p.27) thus I wanted to see how this works.
http://ftp1.digi.com.../90000976_F.pdf

Slightly out of topic: does anyone here looked at the ZigBee application profiles? I wonder if it would be hard to implement one in .NET MF. In particular I'm looking at the home automation profile: http://www.zigbee.or...n/Overview.aspx

[greg]

Thanks CW2, it didn't occured to me that this property would be related. However there is only Handshake.RequestToSend (RTS) value, so should I assume it will enable CTS as well?

@greg
Probably I don't need it right now, but asked out of curiosity since it was mentioned in Netduino tech spec. I'm also reading the documentation for XBee module that mentioned flow control (p.27) thus I wanted to see how this works.
http://ftp1.digi.com.../90000976_F.pdf

Slightly out of topic: does anyone here looked at the ZigBee application profiles? I wonder if it would be hard to implement one in .NET MF. In particular I'm looking at the home automation profile: http://www.zigbee.or...n/Overview.aspx

No worries - curiousity is a good thing. I'm a network engineer so I worry about CTS/RTS all the time for stupid serial lines but I wish I didn't. then again in the stuff I work on they can't afford to lose any bytes along the way since it's all the out-of-band management.

I much prefer ignoring CTS/RTS when I can!