List available COM ports

Question

I have a very small code that shows available COM ports.

My question is:

Is there an easy way to have the program to run in the tray and only popup when a new COM port is available and is it possible to add the name for the COM port that you can see in device manager ec "USB serial port"?

I often add/remove a USB->RS232 comverter and find it a pain in the ass because I must go into the device manger to see what COM port it is assigned to. It's not the same each time

Maybe there already is a small app that can do this but I havent found it on Google yet

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.IO.Ports;

namespace Available_COMports

{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        //show list of valid com ports
        foreach (string s in SerialPort.GetPortNames())
        {
            listBox1.Items.Add(s);
        }  
    }

    private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    }

    private void listBox1_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    }
}

}

score 28 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 17 '18 at 16:44

 public static void Main()
    {
        // Get a list of serial port names.
        string[] ports = SerialPort.GetPortNames();

        Console.WriteLine("The following serial ports were found:");

        // Display each port name to the console.
        foreach(string port in ports)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(port);
        }

        Console.ReadLine();
    }

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

11

Take a look at this question. It uses WMI to find available COM ports. You could keep track of what COM ports exist, and only notify about new ones.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

Community

1
1

answered Mar 27 '11 at 00:27

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 27 '11 at 00:37

7

To find out when devices are hot-plugged, you want to handle WM_DEVICECHANGE. Call RegisterDeviceNotification to enable delivery of these notifications.

answered Mar 27 '11 at 00:37

Ben Voigt

277,958
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score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 09 '17 at 19:22

The code to get the COM number of certain device.

List<USBDeviceInfo> devices = new List<USBDeviceInfo>();
ManagementObjectSearcher searcher =
    new ManagementObjectSearcher("root\\CIMV2",
    "SELECT * FROM Win32_PnPEntity");
foreach (ManagementObject queryObj in searcher.Get())
{
    devices.Add(new USBDeviceInfo(
        (string)queryObj["DeviceID"],
        (string)queryObj["PNPDeviceID"],
        (string)queryObj["Name"]
    ));
}

foreach (USBDeviceInfo usbDevice in devices)
{
    if (usbDevice.Description != null)
    {
        if (usbDevice.Description.Contains("NAME OF Device You are Looking for")) //use your own device's name
        {
            int i = usbDevice.Description.IndexOf("COM");
            char[] arr = usbDevice.Description.ToCharArray();
            str = "COM" + arr[i + 3];
            if (arr[i + 4] != ')')
            {
                str += arr[i + 4];
            }
            break;
        }
    }
}

mySerialPort = new SerialPort(str);

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 24 '23 at 21:17

I'm using .NET 6. I got Md.Rakibuz Sultan's answer to work after adding the nuget package System.IO.Ports.

Program.cs:


using System.IO.Ports;

internal class Program
{
    private static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        // Get a list of serial port names.
        string[] ports = SerialPort.GetPortNames();

        Console.WriteLine("The following serial ports were found:");

        // Display each port name to the console.
        foreach (string port in ports)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(port);
        }

        Console.ReadLine();
    }
}

List available COM ports

5 Answers5