Connecting the device via IR?

If the IR port is acting as a keyboard input device then either it is wired in directly as a human interface device, in which case that identity will be part of the chip on its USB controller and you are not going to be able to change it.

If however it is a serial FIR port and there is a driver DLL performing the conversion into ASCII, then in theory, you might be able to change the driver to re-use the COM port with ActiveSync. You are going to have to look through the HKLM driver sections and look at the device COM port availability to ascertain what my be what. If it is a standard serial port then in theory you could take the registry and (if needed) driver from another CE device, import it and is might work.

The following project source code files use Basic4PPC.
The .exe files should work on any PPC with the required .NET CF installed.

Basic4ppc homepage

Here's an addition to my Graphic LCD board
No, not the zif socket, the circuit to the right, a Microchip Pic to PPC IR board.


Ignore the date

You need to buy the PSXIR.hex file from sirpic.com
Please don't ask me for the PSXIR hex file. You can buy it from www.sirpic.com like I did ;-)




The following circuit is from www.sirpic.com



The circuit was originally designed to talk to Palm handheld PDA's.
I decided to try the circuit with a Pocket PC.

Please don't email sirpic.com with Pocket PC questions. They will probably be ignored.

The PSXIR chip is a PIC12F629 or PIC12F675 device.



So, armed with a, 'Registered version', of Basic4ppc.

Basic4ppc homepage

I wrote a short program that sends a string via IR RS232, then reads the response from the PIC controlling the IR board.

My first downer was that the IR board only ever received the first byte of the string my PPC sent.
I cured this by sending the string from a FOR NEXT loop with a short pause between bytes. Sorted :-)

Obviously, all the error checking for a bad received byte must be catered for in the PIC code.

Downer two. I can't get my PPC to read a byte or string sent from the IR board.
Not really a problem, but I would like 2 way communication.




Using PocketDAQ proves that the PPC 'can' read data sent from a Pic.

Then I came across Franson Serial tools.

Download SerialNET.dll for .NET Compact Framework and buy a licence .


The SerialNET.dll gives you access to the Raw IR port of your computer or PPC using VB, C#, VB.NET, CF.NET etc.

Using #Develop , I've managed to create my own RawIr.dll for Basic4ppc that uses code from within SerialNet.dll

RawIr.dll functions, properties etc are here

Warning.
You must use the Dispose function of RawIr.dll before quitting or exiting any source code examples in your own apps that use RawIr.dll. If you don't, SerialNET.dll will eat your memory and you will have to soft reset your device on a regular basis. If you end your app by clicking the 'X' top right of screen, the Dispose function is still not called. It will EAT your device memory ;-)

Basic4PPC IR application for Microchip 16F628 control. More here.

Basic4PPC IR serial terminal application. More here.

Download the zip file for both projects here.

Based upon the fact that the documentation for the PIC12F629 mentions IrDA, I assume that it it's possible. Of course your IR lamp needs to have a modulator as well as a demodulator in it for it to be possible (transmit and receive).

Can you create a dial up networking connection that can bind to infrared or what might be the COM port number for this USB serial connection?

i would be in what on old CE was start > programs > communications > remote networking > make new connection.