How to read from a device's COM Port?

Question

Hello, I´ve a device running Windows CE, which is capable to receive GPS datas. Now I wrote an application (C#, .Net Compact Framework 2.0 using VS2008) in order to receive this data and later on work with it. The support contact of the device told me to use its COM port (number 5) to get the data. As I´m not that experienced in working with C#, I have tried so hard to get the data (Longitude, Latitude) into my local variables … in vain. My first idea was to add the library (*.dll) brought by the device’s SDK. There I found a structure which contains the variables dLongitude and dLatitude. I thought getting the values of this datas into my local variables would be the solution…result was: they only returned 0.0… … I can’t get rid of the feeling that I’m totally barking up the wrong tree… (see my first question on this site) You would help me so much, if you could give me a hint in which direction I have to go. I just don’t know how to read from device’s COM Ports or where to read about how to do so. Thank you!!

Answer 1

GPS data through serial ports often follows the NMEA 0183 standard. It's pretty much just periodic human-readable numbers.