>Hi,
>Just needed a starting point for this project.
>
>I have a set of outdoor lights that I want to turn on and off depending of sunrise and sunset.
>
>The outdoor lights are plugged in to a SolidState which is in plugged into a PC using a COM cable.
>
>On the PC, I have a file that I want to pass values in and read values from.
>
>This would be details like: Date, SunriseTime,SunsetTime, TimeOut.
>
>I want the application to be able to communicate to the outdoor lights, through the SolidState device.
>
>Any ideas?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Alvin

It depend on low level protocol, timeouts, etc.
You can use MSCOMM.OCX