Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications 5

I have updated earlier editions of the book to concentrate of VB.NET, including both managed and .NET native code. Here are some of the areas covered:
Serial communication background (theory)
Hardware and Virtual Serial Ports and their physical implementation, including RS-232, RS-488, RS-485, and TTL
Modems
Serial communication protocols
Checksum and CRC calculation
Basic serial communication program design, starting with a serial terminal program
Global Positioning System (GPS) implementation
Mapping using data from a GPS receiver
Error corrected file transfers
Wired and wireless serial port devices
How serial data can be used in practice – data parsing, interpretation and data rendering
When and when not to use an “event-driven” serial design
Finite state machine design as applied to serial communication
Windows Service programming
Serial terminal programs
Magstripe and barcode readers
An Enhanced Serial Port control
9-bit data – difficult but not impossible
Data acquisition and control
Arduino boards; code design and use with Visual Studio
XBee, Bluetooth and other serial radio architectures
How to debug serial code
Serial code problems, solutions and code optimization
How to use a serial port in some non-serial input/output (I/O) applications
Porting serial programs from VB6 to VB .NET
VB6 and VBA examples and the use of serial communication ActiveX controls
The Windows serial communication Application Programming Interface (API)
Non-standard serial port parameters (speed and data width)