Problem speaking to WiTilt through Visual Basic

Wireless & IoT
1

Hi, I’m encountering a “Blue Screen of Death” when I try to send a “1” string to the WiTilt via some Visual Basic code, and was wondering if anyone knew how to remedy the situation.

I’m using the MSCOMM activeX object in Excel 2003, which allows me to open up my serial port and send outputs and receive inputs. (Actually, I’m using NetCOMM, but this is nearly identical to MSCOMM, and this issue happens no matter which ocx I use).

I’m able to receive input okay (and can see the Wi-Tilt Menu, for example), but I can’t send an output to serial port without crashing my X60. My VBA code looks like this:

NETComm1.CommPort = 6
NETComm1.PortOpen = True
NETComm1.Settings = "57600,N,8,1" 
NETComm1.Output = "1"

and my computer crashes! I’m able to control the Wi-tilt through Hyperterminal just fine, so I think this problem has something to do with the format of the output I’m sending to the serial port. I’ve tried outputting Chr(1) and Chr$(1) but that also crashes my machine.

Thanks to anyone who can help!

David

2

As an update, I solved this issue by reinstalling the bluetooth stack on my computer. The cause of the problem, from what I can tell, was that the Bluetooth communications port was being established in a similar location to another critical process, and multiple writing to the same area resulted in a crash. The new bluetooth software for my Lenovo seems to put Bluetooth communications ports where they don’t mess with other processes.