My company developed a device that communicates with a PC via Bluetooth using a virtual COM port.
Now we need a user to pair a device with a PC (MS Windows OS) first and then enter it's com port number manually into our application(I bet 95% of users will fail on this taks).
So I'd like my application to present a user with a list of paired bluetooth devices (a list of their "friendly names") and after that I'd like to find out the selecded device's COM port number automatically.
How can I do it in c#? (a solution independent of installed bluetooth stack is appreciated).
Thanks in advance.
Best Answer
See my answer at Widcomm bluetooth : how to open the virtual COM for my understanding of the licence: using the binary version is free for commercial use. And, also that I'm maintainer of the library.
However you may want a solution to your current task at the moment. :-) So, use WMI to find the current COM ports in place and see if any of them are for your device. For example in PowerShell:
In that big long string one sees the address of the target device: 00803A686519. One can use WMI from .NET, run that query, filter the ones with "BTHENUM", and then parse out the address.
If you the do need to create a new Bluetooth virtual COM port, use 32feet.NET's BluetoothDeviceInfo.SetServiceState(BluetoothService.SerialPort) API. See the "Bluetooth Serial Ports" section in the User Guide e.g. at http://www.alanjmcf.me.uk/comms/bluetooth/32feet.NET%20--%20User%20Guide.html, and the class documentation in the release.
Unfortunately the native Win32 API we call does not tell what name of COM port it created! :-( So run the WMI query before and after the call to see what new name appeared (or use System.IO.Ports.SerialPort.GetPortNames as its simpler).
That's all specific to the Microsoft Bluetooth stack. I haven't investigated how other stacks behave in this regard. After a brief check Widcomm's serial ports appear in SerialPort.GetPortNames but not in the WMI query...