RS232 library for .net core

Question

We are developing applications in .Net Core and one of them require to access a serial port.

As I learned that System.IO.Ports won't be implemented in .Net Core, I was looking for a nuget library that supplies that functionality, but couldn't get one compatible with .net core (VS Code is showing an error message).

Is there any alternative out there?

UPDATE: I found that the official SerialPort API is being taken into consideration for porting to .Net Core (see https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/984)

Answer 1

This is now fully cross platform in 2021.

Simply NuGet install either using the command line or your IDE : "System.IO.Ports"

The following example is a .NET 5 console mode program that compiles and works on both Linux and Windows.

using System;
using System.IO.Ports;

namespace PipelinesTest
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Console.WriteLine("Reading a GPS Device on COM3");

      SerialPort _port = new SerialPort("COM3", 4800, Parity.None, 8, StopBits.One);

      _port.DataReceived += PortOnDataReceived;
      _port.Open();
      
      Console.WriteLine("Press Return to Exit");
      Console.ReadLine();

      _port.Close();
      _port.DataReceived -= PortOnDataReceived;
      
      Console.WriteLine("Ended");
    }

    private static void PortOnDataReceived(object sender, SerialDataReceivedEventArgs e)
    {
      SerialPort port = sender as SerialPort;
      var line = port.ReadLine();
      Console.WriteLine(line);
    }
  }
}

NOTE: I should have mentioned when I first answered this, you'll need to change the "COM3" in the constructor above to something like "/dev/ttys0" or similar for Linux. You MIGHT also have to run your app as Root/SU on a Linux machine, this is just the nature of Linux's multi user security unfortunately.