how to return variable to VB.NET

[boyindie]

Hi I have been writing this piece of code which will search for all the possible video capture devices on the machine using the Windows DirectShow API. But no matter what I do I can't get this block of code to return the list of devices in a suitable format back to my VB.NET code. I keep getting the error pInvoke Restriction:Can't return a variant. Is there away to convert possibly the variant to a char array, and return the array back to the vb.NET GUI? The code I have is as follows :

extern "C" __declspec(dllexport) VARIANT __cdecl getDevice()
{
// Create the System Device Enumerator.
hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_SystemDeviceEnum, NULL,
CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_ICreateDevEnum,
reinterpret_cast<void**>(&pDevEnum));

if (SUCCEEDED(hr))
{
	// Create an enumerator for the video capture category.
	hr = pDevEnum->CreateClassEnumerator(
		CLSID\_VideoInputDeviceCategory,
		&pEnum, 0);
}

while (pEnum->Next(1, &pMoniker, NULL) == S\_OK)
{
	IPropertyBag \*pPropBag;
	hr = pMoniker->BindToStorage(0, 0, IID\_IPropertyBag, 
		(void\*\*)(&pPropBag));
	if (FAILED(hr))
	{
		pMoniker->Release();
		continue;  // Skip this one, maybe the next one will work.
	} 
	// Find the description or friendly name.
	extern VARIANT varName;
	VariantInit(&varName);
	hr = pPropBag->Read(L"FriendlyName", &varName, 0);

	pPropBag->Release();
	pMoniker->Release();
}
return varName;

}

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated Cheers Boyindie