Email Challenge

I'm trying to help a programmer remotely using only email. Whether this will work remains to be seen. In theory, it should work since I am only supposed to help him understand some high level concepts. He has already written most of the application but controlling hardware is proving a bit too much of a challenge, but I can tell he gets some of it. Just need to figure what he is not getting.

To be clear, I am hoping to avoid getting into his code at all, unless I absolutely have to. Looking at someone's code, in an unfamiliar language, on Windows no less, just doesn't seem very appealing for some reason. So, if the email help doesn't work I'll definitely try other channels first, before looking at his code. Yeah, I'm being very optimistic.