Problem opening serial port with Pyserial

Question

I'm trying to read numerical values sent over a bluetooth modem from a serial port using Pyserial. I'm a beginner at Python, and found a good example that I'm trying to make use of.

from threading import Thread
import time
import serial

last_received = ''
def receiving(ser):
    global last_received
    buffer = ''
    while True:
        buffer = buffer + ser.read(ser.inWaiting())
        if '\n' in buffer:
            lines = buffer.split('\n') # Guaranteed to have at least 2 entries
            last_received = lines[-2]
            #If the modem sends lots of empty lines, you'll lose the
            #last filled line, so you could make the above statement conditional
            #like so: if lines[-2]: last_received = lines[-2]
            buffer = lines[-1]


class SerialData(object):
    def __init__(self, init=50):
        try:
            self.ser = ser = serial.Serial(
            port='/dev/tty.FireFly-16CB-SPP',
            baudrate=115200,
            stopbits=serial.STOPBITS_ONE,
            bytesize=serial.EIGHTBITS
            )
        except serial.serialutil.SerialException:
            #no serial connection
            self.ser = None
        else:
            Thread(target=receiving, args=(self.ser,)).start()

    def next(self):
        if not self.ser:
            return 140 #return anything so we can test when Arduino isn't connected
        #return a float value or try a few times until we get one
        for i in range(40):
            raw_line = last_received
            try:
                return float(raw_line.strip())
            except ValueError:
                print 'bogus data',raw_line
                time.sleep(.005)
        return 0.
    def __del__(self):
        if self.ser:
            self.ser.close()

if __name__=='__main__':
    s = SerialData()
    for i in range(500):
        time.sleep(.015)
        print s.next()

I can open the port in another program, and can send/receive data from it. However, the code above doesn't seem to open the port, and just repeats "100" to the terminal window 500 times, but I don't know where it comes from or why the port doesn't open correctly. There isn't a delay from opening the port as it is on the other program, so I don't even know if it attempts to open.

I don't know what else to try, or where the error is so I'm asking for help. What am I doing wrong?

Thomas K Thomas K · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-30T17:47:25

except serial.serialutil.SerialException:

You're catching and silencing errors in connecting. Comment out this block, and see if it produces an error message.

Problem opening serial port with Pyserial

1 Answers