Serial port to named pipe connector

Serial port (e.g., COM3) to named pipe (e.g., \\.\pipe\com2) connector

Prior art

There are several projects that do similar thing:

COMpipe

Convey

PipeToCom

However, they do not support running them as Windows Service or they have been abandoned by the maintainers.

Main use case for this connector is to run Home Assistant Operating System in Hyper-V VM and connect it to serial devices (e.g., Zigbee dongle) on the host.

Here is sequence diagram to illustrate how it works:

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    Zigbee dongle->>+Windows: USB Serial device (COM3)
    Windows->>+SerialPort2NamedPipeConnector: Read from serial port
    Note left of Hyper-V: Set-VMFirmware –Vmname "home assistant"<br/>–EnableSecureBoot Off
    Note left of Hyper-V: Set-VMComPort -VMName "home assistant"<br/>-Number 2 -Path \\.\pipe\com2
    SerialPort2NamedPipeConnector->>+Hyper-V: Write to named pipe<br/>\\.\pipe\com2
    Hyper-V->>+Home Assistant OS: /dev/ttyS0
    Home Assistant OS->>+Zigbee Home Automation: Read from serial port
    Note right of Zigbee Home Automation: Home Assistant<br/>Integration
    Zigbee Home Automation->>+Home Assistant OS: Write to serial port
    Home Assistant OS->>+Hyper-V: /dev/ttyS0
    Hyper-V->>+SerialPort2NamedPipeConnector: Read from named pipe<br/>\\.\pipe\com2
    SerialPort2NamedPipeConnector->>+Windows: Write to serial port
    Windows->>+Zigbee dongle: USB Serial device (COM3)

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Installation

Create COM port for virtual machine and map that to named pipe:

Set-VMFirmware –Vmname "home assistant" –EnableSecureBoot Off
Set-VMComPort -VMName "home assistant" -Number 2 -Path \\.\pipe\com2

Validate the mapping:

Get-VMComPort -VMName "home assistant"

VMName         Name  Path
------         ----  ----
Home assistant COM 1 
Home assistant COM 2 \\.\pipe\com2

sc.exe create "Serial port to named pipe connector" binPath="C:\Path\To\SerialPort2NamedPipeConnector.exe"

Note: COM 1 might be used for serial console, so safer to use use COM 2.

Links

Create a Windows Service using BackgroundService

SerialPort Class

How to: Use Named Pipes for Network Interprocess Communication

How can I enable kernel debugging by using a COM port on a generation 2 virtual machine?

Configure UART/COM in Linux using Hyper-V Generation 2 VM

Hyper-V Serial port - Step-By-step guide

deCONZ Serial Protocol

deCONZ — Serial Protocol

Serial Line Internet Protocol

Named pipes hang when written asynchronously w/o async flag