You could use the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) after pinging the node to get the MAC address; I don't know about the serial number, however.

Use command prompt or a batch file to ping the device. After pinging, the MAC should be cached in the ARP table of your NIC, so use the "arp -a" command and it should display the physical address (MAC).

As long as you and the node are on the same physical network, it should work fine.