Question

Here is the deal. I found a source code and changed it a little bit so i can retrieve data from a receiver that is on com6. The data i am receiving is binary. What i want is to convert it to a string so i can cut parts of the string and decode them seperately. how can i dot his?
The source code is beneath.

using System;
using System.IO.Ports;
using System.Threading;

public class PortChat
{
    static bool _continue;
    static SerialPort _serialPort;

    public static void Main()
    {
        string name;
        string message;
        StringComparer stringComparer = StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase;
        Thread readThread = new Thread(Read);

        // Create a new SerialPort object with default settings.
        _serialPort = new SerialPort();

        // Allow the user to set the appropriate properties.
        _serialPort.PortName = SetPortName(_serialPort.PortName);
        _serialPort.BaudRate = SetPortBaudRate(_serialPort.BaudRate);
        _serialPort.Parity = SetPortParity(_serialPort.Parity);
        _serialPort.DataBits = SetPortDataBits(_serialPort.DataBits);
        _serialPort.StopBits = SetPortStopBits(_serialPort.StopBits);
        _serialPort.Handshake = SetPortHandshake(_serialPort.Handshake);

        // Set the read/write timeouts
        _serialPort.ReadTimeout = 1000;
        _serialPort.WriteTimeout = 1000;

        _serialPort.Open();
        _continue = true;
        readThread.Start();

        Console.Write("Name: ");
        name = Console.ReadLine();

        Console.WriteLine("Type QUIT to exit");

        while (_continue)
        {
            message = Console.ReadLine();

            if (stringComparer.Equals("quit", message))
            {
                _continue = false;
            }
            else
            {
                _serialPort.WriteLine(
                    String.Format("<{0}>: {1}", name, message));
            }
        }

        readThread.Join();
        _serialPort.Close();
    }

    public static void Read()
    {
        while (_continue)
        {

            try
            {             


                string message = _serialPort.ReadLine();
                Console.WriteLine(message);
            }
            catch (TimeoutException) { }
        }
    }

    public static string SetPortName(string defaultPortName)
    {
        string portName;

            portName = "COM6";

        return portName;
    }

    public static int SetPortBaudRate(int defaultPortBaudRate)
    {
        string baudRate;


        baudRate = "9600";

        return int.Parse(baudRate);
    }

    public static Parity SetPortParity(Parity defaultPortParity)
    {
        string parity;

        parity = "None";

        return (Parity)Enum.Parse(typeof(Parity), parity);
    }

    public static int SetPortDataBits(int defaultPortDataBits)
    {
        string dataBits;

        dataBits = "8";

        return int.Parse(dataBits);
    }

    public static StopBits SetPortStopBits(StopBits defaultPortStopBits)
    {
        string stopBits;

        stopBits = "One";

        return (StopBits)Enum.Parse(typeof(StopBits), stopBits);
    }

    public static Handshake SetPortHandshake(Handshake defaultPortHandshake)
    {
        string handshake;

        handshake = "None";

        return (Handshake)Enum.Parse(typeof(Handshake), handshake);
    }
}

Answer 1

Data from ports will always come in binary(bytes), therefore it depends on how to interpret the data. Assuming that the bytes are ASCII, you can encode it to a string as follows:

byte[] binaryData ; // assuming binaryData contains the bytes from the port.

string ascii =  Encoding.ASCII.GetString(binaryData);