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Serial Devices connections and responses

  • January 26, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 15 views

olly_egw

We have a custom application that calls and polls telephone numbers using an analog modem on COM1 port. I would like to port this application to FME and I have been unable to find any native transfomers/readers/writer that can communicate with COM Port1.

 

Question:

  • Can FME natively communicate with COM Ports ?
  • If so, how is this done.
  • If not, any suggestions on how to make with work

Best answer by daveatsafe

Hi @olly_egw​,

There are no FME readers or transformers that can communicate with the COM ports, but you could use the pySerial module within the PythonCreator transformer to activate the modem and return a feature for each call.

To install the pySerial module, please follow these steps:

https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME_Desktop_Documentation/FME_Desktop/Workbench/Installing-Python-Packages.htm

The pySerial documentation can be found at https://pyserial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

A good starting point for using the PythonCreator can be found at https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/fmepython/getting_started.html

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3 replies

daveatsafe
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  • Safer
  • Best Answer
  • January 26, 2023

Hi @olly_egw​,

There are no FME readers or transformers that can communicate with the COM ports, but you could use the pySerial module within the PythonCreator transformer to activate the modem and return a feature for each call.

To install the pySerial module, please follow these steps:

https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME_Desktop_Documentation/FME_Desktop/Workbench/Installing-Python-Packages.htm

The pySerial documentation can be found at https://pyserial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

A good starting point for using the PythonCreator can be found at https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/fmepython/getting_started.html


olly_egw
  • Author
  • January 26, 2023

Many thanks @daveatsafe​ .

Was hoping to have a no code solution; but was expecting a python outcome 👍


hkingsbury
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  • January 29, 2023

Thats a really cool use case!!

 

as with @daveatsafe​ my answer was python. One thing to consider is how are you going to do the polling? If you do it within the workbench you will constantly be using a license/engine. So it is probably better to set a schedule for every X minutes to run the process.