License: GPL

ComSentinel is a tool to solve a problem that frequently happens on Windows when using many USB -> Serial interfaces, e.g. when many Arduino boards are used in the same project.

Due to a not-so-intuitive way Windows assigns com port numbers, it happens that two Arduino's get the same conflicting COM line, for instance two COM2's. This is a frequent reason of malfunctioning.

Moreover, once plugged knowing which COM port has been allocated is not easy in fact opening the device list and browse the device tree is a time consuming task.

The executable can be loaded from here: pushbutton 'raw'.

Launch ComSentinel to open a dialog box showing all the available COM ports.

The Minimize button, closes the dialog but the application keeps running behind an icon on the windows taskbar.

The ? button shows the Windows system device dialog to change the settings of each COM port.

Once running, click on the taskbar icon to reopen the dialog box and exit the application if needed.

While silently running in the Taskbar Notification Area it receives messages from the OS dealing with changes in the device configuration and it checks if new COM interfaces appeared or disappeared or if conflicting COM's have been plugged.

COM1 has been plugged

COM1 has been unplugged

A conflicting USB/Serial interface with COM1 has been plugged and it conflicts with another COM port.

The dialog box when a conflict state is found.

This tool is written in C under WIN32 api. It does not need any installation and is pretty small.

It has been compiled with the LCC compiler (32 bit vesion) that can be downloaded from here.

Some macro definitions are missing from the include files of the LCC compiler (2012 edition) and have been added to local includes.