It has been almost a week since I've received my senior project. I'm very excited with this project because I will be able to apply some of what I've done at work on this project. So far, I've been able to go online and find several very good sources in which to start on my project. With these resources, I'm trying to determine exactly what needs to be done with this project. I will continue to do more research and set up a plan on which to tackle the rest of the project.

I have made contact!!! I've been able to connect two computers via the serial port. I was able to read and write to HyperTerminal. My next step is to continue learning the dcb structure so I can start designing the methods and to look into creating events.

I've read the book that Dr. Pankratz has given me to use. I'm still in the process of writing the procedures. I've also started looking at the different events. This next week, I'll continue to write the procedures and continue the research and possibly write procedures for the events.

I've continued to work on some of the functions and the events. I also started working on some of the error checking functions to make sure that correct values are being entered into the functions. I've gotten to the point where the basic code is working, so I wanted to test it in Visual Studio .NET. I first started by creating a dll of my functions. I did this by creating a new Win32 Dynamic-Link Library project in Visual Studio 6. I then pasted my functions into it and did a build. The build went fine and the dll was created, but I was not able to get Visual Studio .NET to import the dll. I will continue to work on the events and trying to import the dll.

I spent my available time working on the presentation. I also read the documentation that Dr. Pankratz has found. This has given me a better idea how the WaitCommEvent function works. I will continue to work on it and try to figure out the best way to implement it.

I've been extremely swamped with 3 tests, a speech, a paper, and an interview this past week. I have not been able to put very much time into the project. I did have a conversation with Kevin Oleniczak, who is an engineer with Sprint. He has given me some very good leads for my project, some of which he uses for his own projects. I am going to look further into them this week.

I've been able to figure out how threads work. I was also able to call functions that are sent as parameters. The main problems that I have been having this week are accessing the parameters sent to a new thread and being able to access functions from a dll.

After talking with Dr. Pankratz, I've been able to create a working dll. Even better, I was able to call it in a C# windows application. I had the right code in C#, but I was creating dll wrong. The dll that is working right now is just one int function, but it's a starting point.

I have gotten all of my basic function calls working in C#. I was having problems earlier with referencing in C#, but it is fixed now. It was a minor syntax difference. Instead of using an & like in C++, ref needs to be placed in front of the variable. I talked with Dr. Pankratz about how to handle users' reads and he had me discuss this with Mr. Blahnik. Mr. Blahnik suggested not using the events. He said they sometimes have trouble with getting queued. He said to discuss this with Dr. Pankratz.

I HAVE THE INFRARED PORT FOR REMOTES WORKING!!! After looking at Zach Leider's project, I was able to determine the needed values to communicate with the device and the device's initialization sequence. After finding this information out, I was able to create a C++ application that would read in the bytes from my remote control and display the bytes on the screen. I have met with Dr. Pankratz and we decided not to put the read event in the dll. He agreed with Mr. Blahnik and we decided I would make an application that would show how to use threads, the WaitCommEvent, and my dll if read events were wanted.

I am having some troubles getting my dll to work in C++. After being able to get the infrared port to work with the functions I created, it does not work with my dll. I have also had trouble creating overriding functions on my dll. Only one function definition for each function.

I have everything working!!! All of my examples and the Serial to USB adapter work. All I have to do is finish preparing for the presentation and start with my documentation.