Terminate Serial Recieved Data Handler

Question

Hi. I am receiving data from a serial port, but there is no command in the data to state that the message has ended, therefore my code is just hanging in the data deceived handler and timing out. 

 

My question is, is there a way which i can terminate the handler once i have receiving a certain piece of data or character?  

 

 

I am currently using the below code to read data from the serial port.  

 

Due to the serial port connection i am unable to use readline() or read existing(), instead i read the data by readbytes. 

 

private void serial_DataReceived(object sender, System.IO.Ports.SerialDataReceivedEventArgs e) 

{

try

{

//Initialize a buffer to hold the received data

byte[] buffer = new byte[sp.ReadBufferSize];

//There is no accurate method for checking how many bytes are read

//unless you check the return from the Read method

try

{

int bytesRead = sp.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);

}

catch { }

//data we are received is ASCII data.

tString += Encoding.ASCII.GetString(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);

//Check if string contains the terminator

if (tString.IndexOf((char)_terminator) > -1)

{

//If tString does contain terminator we cannot assume that it is the last character received

string workingString = tString.Substring(0, tString.IndexOf((char)_terminator));

//Remove the data up to the terminator from tString

tString = tString.Substring(tString.IndexOf((char)_terminator));

// MessageBox.Show(workingString);

sp.DiscardOutBuffer();

sp.DiscardInBuffer();

tString = "";

ProcessSerialBuffer(workingString);

localStatus = "Aknowledgement Recieved";

}

// we then pass the buffer value to the process serial buffer method.

}

catch (Exception ex)

{

MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());

}

}

 

 

 

I welcome any ideas or suggestions, many thanks.