Virtual Serial Ports

[hippy]

I'm currently controlling a PICAXE in a friend's house some way away by connecting my PC to a Virtual Serial Port which routes over the internet to a TCP/IP Server on their PC which then connects through physical serial ports to the PICAXE.

This works fine for run-time serial data transfers, but the VSP only transmits raw ASCII. I've hacked around this using the TCP/IP Connection Request to force the PICAXE to Reset and I can download code from the Programming Editor on my PC.

The problem is that the Programming Editor opens the Port and keeps it open. It needs closing or a different port selecting to allow further downloads.

Is it possible to make the Programming Editor close the serial port after downloading and open it just prior to a new download ?

 

[BeanieBots]

I have a similar issue. (Ver 4.1.5) It is not possible to run a terminal emulator or similar at the same time that the Editor is open for the same reasons.

 

[hippy]

Also, although it does sometimes happen using physical serial ports, the latency when closing virtual ports leads to a much higher occurance of 'Duplicate Instances' when closing the Programming Editor and re-launching the application. These jam up Windows and usually require Task Manager to be used to kill off the processes or sometimes a re-boot.

Could you please add a check for App.FirstInstance on startup and simply abort if the Programming Editor is already running.

This would also alleviate the problems caused when one has the Programming Editor open and it is accidentally launched a second time.