difference between incomming BT com-port and outgoing?

[Markus.Humm]

Hello,

what please is the difference between a incomming bluetooth serial port
and a outgoing bluetooth serial port?

How to get the port numbers of bluetooth serial ports from a program?
(without the user needing to select it)

Greetings

Markus

 

[Peter Foot [MVP]]

An incoming port is used when a remote device established a connection to
your device, and is exposed as the SerialPort service to the remote device.

An outgoing port is used to make a connection to the serial port service on
a remote device (e.g. GPS Receiver).

There isn't a definitive way to get the port names that are setup as it
depends on the stack installed on the device. If it's the Microsoft stack on
WM5.0 they are stored in the registry, on pre-WM5.0 devices with the MS
stack this was an OEM implemented feature and so there was a custom control
panel item written by HTC and other versions from other manufacturers.

Peter

 

[Markus.Humm]

An incoming port is used when a remote device established a connection
to your device, and is exposed as the SerialPort service to the remote
device.

An outgoing port is used to make a connection to the serial port service
on a remote device (e.g. GPS Receiver).

So this just depends on who will initiate the BT connection, right?

There isn't a definitive way to get the port names that are setup as it
depends on the stack installed on the device. If it's the Microsoft
stack on WM5.0 they are stored in the registry, on pre-WM5.0 devices
with the MS stack this was an OEM implemented feature and so there was a
custom control panel item written by HTC and other versions from other
manufacturers.

This is really bad because it prevents applications from easily using
it. Now the user must choose this port and tell it the application,
right? Are there any WM 5.0 devices (Windows Mobile) which don't use the
MS BT stack? If yes, which and what stack do they use and how does it
work then?

Greetings

Markus

 

[Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]]

Yes, who initiates the connection determines whether you want an incoming or
outgoing connection.

Yes, it's not perfect, but if your application uses a serial port, it should
not care whether it's implemented via Bluetooth or an actual RS-232 port, so
you'd need to have some means of selecting the port anyway.

Paul T.

 

[Markus.Humm]

Yes, who initiates the connection determines whether you want an incoming or
outgoing connection.

Yes, it's not perfect, but if your application uses a serial port, it should
not care whether it's implemented via Bluetooth or an actual RS-232 port, so
you'd need to have some means of selecting the port anyway.

Hm but if it is already stored in the registry why can't I have a simple
API to query it?

Do you happen to have any details about how it is stored in the
registry, maybe even some simple example how to read it out? I'd be
interested in outgoing communications, so I would initiate it.

Greetings

Markus

 

[Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]]

Why isn't there an API for everything? There just isn't. There's no
technical reason why there isn't one.

You can use the every-popular method of finding out where in the registry
*anything* is stored: export the registry using Remote Registry Editor,
then make a change to add the device, etc. that you want to know the entry
for, then export again using Remote Registry Editor. Compare the before and
after exports and you should be able to easily find what changed.

Paul T.