Interfacing...

Arduino and Linux TTY

Elliott Kipp/edk4971 posted in the forums on how to configure a linux tty with the correct parity, baud, etc to talk to arduino.

Repeating it here:

stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 cs8 115200 ignbrk -brkint -icrnl -imaxbel -opost -onlcr -isig -icanon -iexten -echo -echoe -echok -echoctl -echoke noflsh -ixon -crtscts

make sure /dev/ttyUSB0 or whatever is your arduino, and 115200 is the baud you did your Serial.begin(XXXX) with

You can then do:

echo "Hello Arduino" > /dev/ttyUSB0
to send the string (followed by a newline) to your arduino.

Taken from this forum: http://www.crystalfontz.com/forum/showthread.php?p=19562

You can also do:

tail -f /dev/ttyUSB0
to read what your arduino has to tell you.

TODO: Is there any problem with buffering (and if so, how do we flush) if we send content with no end of line:

echo -n "Hello" > /dev/ttyUSB0

Using 'screen' to provide an interactive session with arduino

this first comment on todbot's post on serial c code to talk to arduino shows how to get an interactive session with arduino using the screen command.

screen /dev/cu.usbserial 9600

I haven't tested this yet.

Using 'screen' and the SimpleMessageSystem to provide an interactive session with Arduino

1) Program the Arduino with the example code include in the SimpleMessageSystem library (leave the baud rate at 9600 for this example).

2) Open a terminal window.

3) Enter the following command (that differs slightly from above):

stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 cs8 9600 ignbrk -brkint -imaxbel -opost -onlcr -isig -icanon -iexten -echo -echoe -echok -echoctl -echoke noflsh -ixon -crtscts

4) Start screen by typing the following:

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600

5) Start by pressing the enter/return key to clear the Arduino's buffer.

6) Type the following commands, followed by pressing the enter/return key for each message (please be warned that the characters will not appear as you type them, but the Arduino rx/tx leds will blink, this is considered normal behavior):

w d 13 1

r a

r d

The first message will turn on a let connected to port 13. The second message will return the value of all the analog inputs. The third message will return the value of all the digital inputs.

8/7/08-by Roland Latour (rolandl@cavenet.com) There's a better way. 'screen' actually forks a second process to catch data coming the other way. So you need a helper process. My shell script package does that, and interprets and formats the data. Now with a GUI provided by the Xdialog command. Run 'wget http://user.cavenet.com/rolandl/SMS1.tgz' to get the tarball.

Added 6/16/2009-by Lee:

Workaround for using cat /dev/ttyUSB0 and screen /dev/ttyUSB0 on a Linux computer.

On my system, the Arduino development environment doesn't close the port /dev/ttyUSB0 quite right.

The scheme for my project is to send serial data out the USB type B connector on my Arduino Mega into a file. Open the file in a spreadsheet..

cat /dev/ttyUSB0 > datafile
gnumeric < datafile 

Specifically: The arduino-0015 development application does not close or release /dev/ttyUSB0 on Linux systems completely.

As a result, "cat /dev/ttyUSB0" fails if you have used the serial data display in the Arduino development application.

To re-capture the data use "screen"

screen /dev/ttyUSB0     // Kill screen with ^ak or control-a k

An alternate way to stop the screen program: Display the process table and kill screen using the PID in column two.

ps aux         // see screen and SCREEN processes. Note PID in column 2
kill 9264 9265 // screen is gone and "cat /dev/ttyUSB0" now works


Background about the environment for these commands. My Arduino hardware is an Arduino Mega that has a USB type B port built in. The program application uses serial data setup and printing straight out of the Arduino Programming Notebook. In the Arduino development environment, I can see the data being printed by the Arduino board using the Serial Monitor button. This should work before you can get data from /dev/ttyUSB0. The computer runs a mix of Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04.

Serial port code fragments:

	 setup() 
	{
	Serial.begin(9600);
	}
	loop()
	{
	Serial.print("Total "); 
	Serial.println(total_count/1000);
	}

End of note by Lee.