Understanding why missing serial port I'm receiving data from usb - python

I've a device which is supposed to send data via a usb connection. When I connect my laptop via usb to this device and open a terminal I get sone weird characters and are printed as a command line. However I haven't configured anything.
If I try to connect to the device via serial port initializing it I cannot know which port is? Plugging ang unplugging the device shows no difference in the result of:
>ls /dev/*
Which seems the device is not detected, but as I said in the command promp or even if I use any other application, it is as if I was writing, but random characters
Does anyone k ow why does it happen?
How can I set communication characteristics to be able to connect to the device at a certain baud-rate?
The idea is to get data via Python.
Lots of thanks ;)

Related

Is there a way to view what is being written on serial from a Python script without connecting a device?

In short, I have written a Python program to write a series of commands to a serial device I'm working with, and I want to make sure they're working in the way I want them to.
For sure, no device connected means no response/nothing to read...
Did you consider trying a serial port sniffer, if you google for serial port sniffer, you'll find more than you need.
Connect any serial device and sniff what you send.

PySerial, check if Serial is Connected

So I am working on a project that has a Raspberry Pi connected to a Serial Device via a USB to Serial Connector. I am trying to use PySerial to track the data being sent over the connected Serial device, however there is a problem.
Currently, I have my project set up so that every 5 seconds it calls a custom port.open() method I have created, which returns True if the port is actually open. This is so that I don't have to have the Serial Device plugged in when I initially go to start the program.
However I'd also like to set it up so that the program can also detect when my serial device is disconnected, and then reconnected. But I am not sure how to accomplish this.
If I attempt to use the PySerial method isOpen() to check if the device is there, I am always having it return true as long as the USB to Serial connector is plugged in, even if I have no Serial device hooked up to the connector itself.
You might be able to tell whether the device is physically plugged in by checking the status of one of the RS232 control lines - CTS, DSR, RI, or CD (all of which are exposed as properties in PySerial). Not all USB-serial adapters support any of these.
If the only connection to the device is the TX/RX lines, your choices are extremely limited:
Send a command to the device and see if it responds. Hopefully its protocol includes a do-nothing command for this purpose.
If the device sends data periodically without needing an explicit command, save a timestamp whenever data is received, and return False if it's been significantly longer than the period since the last reception.

how can i connect and send commands to a serial port while another program is using it?

I am using a telit he910g card. it is connected to my PC directly using a miniPCI slot.
I am using it for 3G internet connection and A-GPS/GPS services.
My system is running linux mint 17.1, the 3G connection is handled using the network manager APP and works great. The 3G connection is started and handled using a module that is part of a program I am writing.
The code I am using in order to connect to the serial port is this:
def _connect_to_device(self):
""" Connect to a serial port """
try:
self._device = serial.Serial(self._filename, baudrate=self._baud_rate)
except StandardError, e:
raise StandardError("Couldn't connect to GPS device. Error: %s" % str(e))
When I use the python program alone it works great. But when I try and use it while the 3G is on i cant connect to the serial device. The wierd thing is that if I try to connect to it using a program like "minicom" while 3G is turned on it DOES work.
So my question is: how can I make both run and work together? since now they are mutually exclusive.
thanks to all who help. :)
Glad you found a way round your problem. Just for completeness:
Normally, serial ports can be opened by multiple processes.
If one of them does ioctl(,TIOCEXCL) on the open file then further opens will return EBUSY until everyone closes the device. Only root can get past this and open the device at all times.
If root opens the device and does an ioctl(,TIOCNXCL), then other processes can open the device too.
In python, TIOCNXCL isnt defined anywhere, but you can do the ioctl (eg on stdin) with:
import fcntl
TIOCEXCL = 0x540c # from /usr/lib64/perl5/asm-generic/ioctls.ph
TIOCNXCL = 0x540d
print fcntl.ioctl(0, TIOCNXCL)
Ok, so it is solved.
the issue was that the telit module has 2 ports /dev/ttyACM0 (high speed) and /dev/ttyACM3 (lower speed).
I tried to connect to the high speed one, but apparently the 3G uses that one and it causes contentions.
So moving to use the lower speed port in my script solved the issue.

Python Serial Port - unable to write data

I am relatively new to Python. I wrote a script and need to add triggers that need to be send via an usb serial port to another pc. The problem is that the triggers (in this code example the 2) never show up on the software on the other pc. When I check it with the print() command, it does print a value, but the printed value is the same number for two different triggers. I have read other posts, I searched the internet, and I tried various things, but I didn't manage to resolve this iusse. This is the code I use for interfacing with the serial port (COM3).
#this part of code is defined at the beginning:
import serial
ser = serial.Serial(port=2, baudrate=9600)
ser.close()
#this part of the code later on to interface with the serial port:
ser.open()
ser.write(chr(2))
ser.close()
Maybe anyone here has any suggestions on where the problem could be? Thanks!
If you haven't already, check that the port settings are correct, 9600,8,N,1 for example. These must match the settings of the remote serial port.
It might be useful to check that the serial connection does work with a terminal emulation program such as minicom (linux), or PuTTY (Windows). Once you have verified that a connection can be made and data transferred, you can be certain that you are connecting to the correct local port, that the port settings are correct, and that your serial cable is working properly.

How to find out if serial port is closed?

I am working on a multi threaded server application for processing serial/USB ports.
The issue is that if a cable gets unplugged, pyserial keeps reporting that the port is open and available. When reading I only receive Empty exceptions (due to read timeout).
How do I find out that a port has been disconnected so that I can handle this case?
Edit: OS is Ubuntu 12.04
Edit 2: Clarification - I am connecting to serial port devices via Serial to USB connector, thus the device being disconnected is an USB device.
A Serial port has no real concept of "cable connected" or not connected.
Depending on the equipment you are using you could try to poll the DSR or CTS lines, and decide there is no device connected when those stay low over a certain time.
From wikipedia:
DTR and DSR are usually on all the time and, per the RS-232 standard
and its successors, are used to signal from each end that the other
equipment is actually present and powered-up
So if you've got a conforming device, the DSR line could be the thing you need.
Edit:
As you seem to use an USB2Serial converter, you can try to check whether the device node still exists - you don't need to try to open it.
so os.path.exists(devNode) could suffice.

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