AWC Electronics - Using the GP3 with Visual Basic Express

Its easy to use the GP-3 with most versions of Visual Basic including the Express versions that Microsoft make available free of charge. Here's a visual guide.
  1. Create a new project. Here I've used gp3test as the name of the project.
    Figure
  2. Add a COM reference to AWCGP3 (this assumes you've installed the library). This screen is accessed from the Project | Add Reference... menu.

    Figure
  3. Add the GP3IO component to the tool box. To do this, open the toolbox and right click on a header like "All Windows Forms". The pick Choose Items.

    Figure
  4. Drag a GP3 control from the tool box to your form. Although it will show on the form at design time, it will be invisible at run time.
    Figure
  5. For this example, I put two buttons on the form. One button will eventually turn on the GP3's onboard LED and the other will turn it off.
    Figure
  6. The GP3 control needs to have the correct COM port set. You might want to allow the user to pick the COM port, but for this simple example, I just hardwired it to COM 8 (a USB serial port on my computer). I also changed the name to GP3.
    Figure
  7. Finally, you can write code to make the buttons work. For a real program you'd probably open the GP3 once in the form load and close it at the end of your program. Here, I just open and close it on each button push.
    Figure

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