C#-APP: FIFO serial output - how to limit lines?

[Polatrite]

I'm working on a project currently that needs to have a fast FIFO text box that displays output from a serial device. It also needs to have fast refresh rate as the data can stream in at about 50 samples a second.

I'm a new C#/managed/.NET developer, so pardon me if I don't understand some principals. A friend recommended I look into a queue, but the overhead involved in queuing up the incoming lines, converting them to an array, then displaying them as a string - 10 times a second, was just plain outrageous. Is there a way to feed a ueue right into a textbox? Otherwise, what suggestions do you have?

(My preferred limit is 1000 lines for now, but I'd like to dynamically adjust that at runtime later.)


~Polatrite~

P.S. Can anyone point me to an extremely up-to-date resource for double-buffering? This flickering is killing me, and I've tried 5 different double-buffering tutorials and it's still flickering the same, or worse.

[oohay251]

Who is going to read the strings at 50 samples per second?
Would it be satisfactory to program it to just show the most recent string received/queued?
I've not had a reason to mess with serial ports before, but have you looked into the System.IO.Ports .SerialPort class? It provides synchronous and event-driven access to the pin signals and easy access to a Stream object to read and write from/to the port.

To test performance, you can tie the class to an event which updates the text in the text box.

[Polatrite]

Who is going to read the strings at 50 samples per second?
Would it be satisfactory to program it to just show the most recent string received/queued?
I've not had a reason to mess with serial ports before, but have you looked into the System.IO.Ports .SerialPort class? It provides synchronous and event-driven access to the pin signals and easy access to a Stream object to read and write from/to the port.

To test performance, you can tie the class to an event which updates the text in the text box.

It's not a matter of who's going to read 50 samples a second. The textbox needs to be displaying in realtime the raw data received from my wireless serial device. It will also be logging the data.

As far as the SerialPort class, I've definitely used it - that's how we pull the data off the serial device. But I'm talking about getting in into a textbox that displays effeciently with a good scrollback. If you're familiar with some of the more featured telnet/SSH clients (putty), that's the type of speed I need.

[Plater]

I've never had trouble getting a textbox to update quickly.
If you use the .AppendText() function it will autoscroll as well.
If you're really picky, write like a wrapper function:

private void TBTheMsg(string msg)
{
   mytextbox.AppendText(msg);
   mytextbox.Invalidate();
   mytextbox.Update();
}
 

Or something, I've written terminal-style apps with it just fine.