How to receive Plug & Play device notifications without a windows form

Question

I am trying to write a class library that can catch the windows messages to notify me if a device has been attached or removed. Normally, in a windows forms app I would just

Answer 1

In Windows CE / Windows Mobile / SmartDevice projects, the standard Form does not provide an override to the WndProc method, but this can be accomplished by making a class based on Microsoft.WindowsCE.Forms.MessageWindow, creating a constructor that takes a form, hold that form in a local variable so that a method on that form can be called whenever the message is detected. Here's a scaled down sample to illustrate. Hope this is helpful to someone in the CE / Windows Mobile world.

  public class MsgWindow : Microsoft.WindowsCE.Forms.MessageWindow {

    public const int WM_SER = 0x500;
    public const int WM_SER_SCANDONE = WM_SER + 0;

    frmMain msgform { get; set; }

    public MsgWindow(frmMain msgform) {
      this.msgform = msgform;
    }

    protected override void WndProc(ref Microsoft.WindowsCE.Forms.Message m) {
      switch (m.Msg) {
        case WM_SER_SCANDONE:
          this.msgform.RespondToMessage(WM_SER_SCANDONE);
          break;
        default:
          break;
      }
      base.WndProc(ref m);
    }

  }

  public partial class frmMain : Form {

    public frmMain() {
      InitializeComponent();
    }

    public void RespondToMessage(int nMsg) {
      try {
        switch (nMsg) {
          case MsgWindow.WM_SER_SCANDONE:
            // do something here based on the message
            break;
          default:
            break;
        }
      } catch (Exception ex) {
        MessageBox.Show(string.Format("{0} - {1}", ex.Message, ex.ToString()), "RespondToMessage() Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation, MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1);
        // throw;
      }
    }

  }