On what to write a configurator for a piece of iron under RS232 port?

Question

User interface

What is the best way to write a configurator for a piece of iron for an RS232 port for an existing protocol?
Requirements:
- Windows (but cross-platform is not excluded)
- GUI
- saving and loading configurations
- Relatively small size (on the order of several megabytes)
I know it's better to write in the language that you know best. But school Pascal, one university course C and the desire to learn how to write normal software make me ask this question. Of the considered options QT (the size of the output scares and work with RS232), Visual C ++ (cross-platform?), Delphi.
I'll be happy to give you advice and tips :)

Answer 1

You will laugh... But NodeJS. I have several projects where I work with serial ports (mainly RS485). NodeJS has taken root remarkably. It is intended for IO. If you write correctly, it easily pulls the control of several devices at the same time. And the GUI is done through the browser, + we get the possibility of remote configuration for free. JavaScript is a very simple language. And writing asynchronously for it is a good gymnastics for the brain. Well, scripts can always be tweaked. To work with the COM port, you need an additional module, such as github.com/joeferner/node-serialport2.

Answer 2

The day before yesterday, we were just finishing up the library in C at work, broadcasting from Moxa to rs232.
I think that if you search, you can find more than one such or similar basis in C or C ++ and for your needs.
And then make a GUI for it, work with configs, etc. In my opinion, it is better to do this for a specific platform, if there really is a size limit. If there is no such thing, then write in Qt (he is on friendly terms with C / C ++). And to reduce the size of the executable file of the program, such topics have long been discussed on their forums.

Answer 3

C#. It's simpler than pluses and there is System.IO.Ports supported in Mono. You don't even have to rebuild a simple gui on WinForms for other axes.

Answer 4

C# - the size is minimal (by the way, where did this requirement come from?), under Windows \ Macos \ Linux, working with ports is elementary, everything is already built into the framework, a lot of examples, saving and loading configurations through serialization - two lines.
Delphi - there are ready-made components, the size of the executable is decent, the size of the community is small, the platform is half dead.

Answer 5

Java. Cross-platform. RS232 is supported through the RxTx library. Such an application can run on Win, Linux, OS X.

Answer 6

A little off the point of the question, but suddenly your program will go to the masses, so
1. Add a port monitor to your configurator right away so that any user can send you the log of communication of the hardware program.
2. Test your program on a small screen netbook.