title: Reading data over serial port from voltmeter
body: <p>I'm sort of new at this and I'm writing a small application to read data from a voltmeter. It's a RadioShack Digital Multimeter 46-range. The purpose of my program is to perform something automatically when it detects a certain voltage. I'm using C# and I'm already familiar with the SerialPort class. </p>
  
  <p>My program runs and reads the data in from the voltmeter. However, the data is all unformatted/gibberish. The device does come with its own software that displays the voltage on the PC, however this doesn't help me since I need to grab the voltage from my own program. I just can't figure out how to translate this data into something useful.</p>
  
  <p>For reference, I'm using the SerialPort.Read() method:</p>
  
  <pre><code>byte[] voltage = new byte[100];
  _serialPort.Read(voltage, 0, 99);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It grabs the data and displays it as so: </p>
  
  <pre><code>16 0 30 0 6 198 30 6 126 254 30 0 30 16 0 30 0 6 198 30 6 126 254 30 0 30 16 0 3
  0 0 6 198 30 6 126 254 30 0 30 16 0 30 0 6 198 30 6 126 254 30 0 30 16 0 30 0 6
  198 30 6 126 254 30 0 30 24 0 30 0 6 198 30 6 126 254 30 0 30 16 0 30 0 254 30 6
  126 252 30 0 6 0 30 0 254 30 6 126 254 30 0
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The space separates each element of the array. If I use a char[] array instead of byte[], I get complete gibberish:</p>
  
  <pre><code>▲   ? ? ▲ ♠ ~ ? ▲   ♠   ▲   ? ? ▲ ♠ ~ ? ▲   ♠   ▲   ? ? ▲ ♠ ~ ? ▲   ♠
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Using the .ReadExisting() method gives me:</p>
  
  <pre><code>▲ ?~?♠~?▲ ▲? ▲  ?~♠~?▲ ?↑ ▲ ??~♠~?▲ F? ▲ ??~♠~?▲ D? ▲ ??~♠~?▲ f?
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>.ReadLine() times out, so doesn't work. ReadByte() and ReadChar() just give me numbers similar to the Read() into array function.</p>
  
  <p>I'm in way over my head as I've never done something like this, not really sure where else to turn.</p>