Serial Port Splitter

[Audio] Hello ALL , Today we would like to present you all our Hackathon idea Serial Port Splitter.

[Audio] What is a serial port ? a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. It provides bidirectional communication interface that allows sending and receiving data . Serial ports are widely used in Configuration and management of networking equipment such as routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers etc. They are also used by different sensors for data acquisition. For example, GPS receivers uses this to transit GPS data. Now coming to the problem statement Usually when we need to access the serial device connected to the serial port, we use serial communication program but what if you need to access the device from several programs at the same time ? Operating system doesn't allow simultaneous COM port connections . Once a port is opened by one application, it is locked and other applications trying to connect to the same port will fail..

[Audio] To further explain the problem, let's consider a real-world example. Assume we have 3 applications which requires the data from the GPS module running on a system having single serial port capable of handling GPS data. These all 3 applications will rely on serial port to send & receive GPS data. Current scenario only one application can stream the data from serial port and other application must wait until the first application release the serial port..

[Audio] To Solve this problem, we are proposing serial port splitter solution. Serial Port Splitter allows to split the serial port to several virtual COM ports. This enables multiple applications to access the same serial port data via spitted virtual COM ports simultaneously. Using virtual COM port, each application "thinks" that it works with real device connected to physical COM port. Serial Port Splitter provides you with the full set of capabilities for parallel working with several serial applications or devices. Serial Port Splitter can also delete created virtual ports to restore actual physical com port..

[Audio] Solution is divided into different sub modules. To receive In-port and Out-Port data from user there is separate module. As name suggests, This module accept physical and virtual com port list data from user and pass is down to validator module. Physical & Virtual Com port validator module make sure that user provided data is correct. As a part of this validator make sure that existing virtual port is not provided as an input. Also, it make sure that actual physical port name is not provided in virtual port list. Com Port Manager module takes validated data list and depending on user request either delete or create new virtual ports. This module takes help of registry key and Serial port driver to handle lifecycle of created virtual ports..