Java Serial Communication on Windows

Question

I\'ve been looking around for a Java API that can communicate with serial devices on Windows/Win32 but many of the APIs I\'ve checked out are either for Linux, too outdated,

Answer 1

Java is notorious for its flaky serial I/O support. At a previous job, we tried both RXTX and SerialIO for an application that streamed data at 56kbps from a Teknic servo controller, and found them to gobble up the CPU quite a bit. Perhaps for apps that don't require continuous streaming from a serial port, both of these libraries are good, but we didn't feel that streaming I/O from a serial port should be eating a sustained 15-30% of the CPU on the machine when it is much needed for other threads in the JVM that need to be responsive.

Instead, we created a server in C++ that would read the stream of data from the serial port on the servo, transform/packetize it and send it to our Java app in XML over a socket connection. The CPU load on the serial I/O server in C++? Barely creeping into 1% at its worst.

There are certain things Java does well - serial I/O, in my opinion, isn't one of them, depending on the type of application...

Ultimately, you should take even what I said with a grain of salt, and try both, RXTX and SerialIO (which is dirt cheap, like $50 or so for the java version) and if they meet your needs, go with it. Personally, I'd stick with SerialIO because it is supported and actively worked on. RXTX, not so much.