External Interfaces/API

Creating a Serial Port Object

You create a serial port object with the serial function. serial requires the name of the serial port connected to your device as an input argument. Additionally, you can configure property values during object creation. For example, to create a serial port object associated with the serial port COM1

s = serial('COM1');

The serial port object s now exists in the MATLAB workspace. You can display the class of s with the whos command.

whos s
  Name      Size         Bytes  Class

  s         1x1            512  serial object

Grand total is 11 elements using 512 bytes

Once the serial port object is created, the properties listed below are automatically assigned values. These general purpose properties provide descriptive information about the serial port object based on the object type and the serial port.

Table 8-3: Descriptive General Purpose Properties 

Property Name	Description
Name	Specify a descriptive name for the serial port object
Port	Indicate the platform-specific serial port name
Type	Indicate the object type

You can display the values of these properties for s with the get function.

get(s,{'Name','Port','Type'})
ans = 
    'Serial-COM1'    'COM1'    'serial'

Configuring and Returning Properties

Configuring Properties During Object Creation