Arduino Control Using a WPF Application

1. An Arduino developer board (I have used an Arduino Leonardo).
2. Light Emitting Diode (LED).

1. Arduino IDE
2. Visual Studio

Let me explain the code first. In the setup() function, we initialize the pins to be configured as input or output. The pinMode() command will allow us to do that. Here 13 is the pin number whereas the output is used to configure it. You can also use other pins but since we have connected the LED to pin number 13, we have used 13. The next part is where you need to define the Baud Rate. The Baud Rate, in this case, will be 9600. You can use other values as well but in that case the value that you use here must match the one you use in your WPF app. Serial.Begin(9600) is used to start the Serial port communication. These are the parts under the setup function. In void loop(), the code that needs to be executed repeatedly is inserted out there. Since we are using Serial port communication, our first course of action is to accept a value through the communication channel. In order to do that, we will first check whether the link is available with the following line of code. Once this condition is checked, we will accept the value over the Serial port. Here we store the value of the character received in a character variable c. We will use this c to switch on and off the LED. Our intent is to switch on and off a LED. The LED will be switched on when we receive 1. When we receive 0, it will be switched off. To switch an LED on and off, we need to change the state of the pin 13 on the Arduino board. When the state is HIGH, the LED is on and vice versa. The line of code used to attain this functionality is: Now the following is the finalized code for void loop: Now you need to compile and upload the code. Just press the right arrow-type button on the top-left corner and your sketch will first be saved and will then compile and ultimately uploaded. The following Figure 4 shows us the screenshot. Once you upload the code, your hardware part is done. Now we will do the controlling part using the WPF app. So open Microsoft Visual Studio and open a WPF project. Figure 5 shows the screenshot of the start page of Visual Studio. Let us name the project controller_Arduino. Now before going to the main code, let me explain how it will work. Serial port communication in WPF will be carried out by the SerialPort class. We will send characters serially using this class. The buttons to be used in the UI will contain a TextBox for entering the com port number where the device will be connected. Once the device is connected a textBlock named StatusBox will display connected. Once the device (Arduino) is connected with the app, then the app will be able to communicate with the Arduino. This project uses serial communication by the USB that definitely is wired. For wireless, you need to have two more hardware and some changes will be done in the circuitry. Everything else will be the same. Let us now design the UI. The UI will consist of the following components.

1. A button named "on" with the content on to switch on a LED.
2. A button named "off" with the content to switch off a LED.
3. A button named connect with the content as connect to connect the Arduino board.
4. A button named disconnect with the content as disconnect to disconnect the Arduino board.
5. A TextBox with the named com port which will be taken as an input for the com port number.
6. A TextBlock with the name status to display the current connection status.