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4.0. Introduction Serial communications provide an easy and flexible way for your Arduino board to interact with your computer and other devices. This chapter explains how to send and receive information using this capability. Described how to connect the Arduino serial port to your computer to upload sketches. The upload process sends data from your computer to Arduino and Arduino sends status messages back to the computer to confirm the transfer is working.

The recipes here show how you can use this communication link to send and receive any information between Arduino and your computer or another serial device. Figure 4-1. Arduino Serial Monitor screen You can also send data from the Serial Monitor to Arduino by entering text in the text box to the left of the Send button. Baud rate is selected using the drop-down box on the bottom right. You can use the drop down labeled “No line ending” to automatically send a carriage return or a combination of a carriage return and a line at the end of each message sent when clicking the Send button. Your Arduino sketch can use the serial port to indirectly access (usually via a proxy program written in a language like Processing) all the resources (memory, screen, keyboard, mouse, network connectivity, etc.) that your computer has. Your computer can also use the serial link to interact with sensors or other devices connected to Arduino. Implementing serial communications involves hardware and software.

The hardware provides the electrical signaling between Arduino and the device it is talking to. The software uses the hardware to send bytes or bits that the connected hardware understands. The Arduino serial libraries insulate you from most of the hardware complexity, but it is helpful for you to understand the basics, especially if you need to troubleshoot any difficulties with serial communications in your projects.

Note Using 0 volts (for 0) and 5 volts (for 1) is very common. This is referred to as the TTL level because that was how signals were represented in one of the first implementations of digital logic, called Transistor-Transistor Logic (TTL). Boards including the Uno, Duemilanove, Diecimila, Nano, and Mega have a chip to convert the hardware serial port on the Arduino chip to Universal Serial Bus (USB) for connection to the hardware serial port.

Other boards, such as the Mini, Pro, Pro Mini, Boarduino, Sanguino, and Modern Device Bare Bones Board, do not have USB support and require an adapter for connecting to your computer that converts TTL to USB. See for more details on these boards. Some popular USB adapters include. Mini USB Adapter. FTDI USB TTL Adapter.

Modern Device USB BUB board Some serial devices use the RS-232 standard for serial connection. These usually have a nine-pin connector, and an adapter is required to use them with the Arduino. RS-232 is an old and venerated communications protocol that uses voltage levels not compatible with Arduino digital pins.

You can buy Arduino boards that are built for RS-232 signal levels, such as the Freeduino Serial v2.0. RS-232 adapters that connect RS-232 signals to Arduino 5V (or 3.3V) pins include the following. RS-232 to TTL 3V-5.5V adapter.

P4 RS232 to TTL Serial Adapter Kits. RS232 Shifter SMD A standard Arduino has a single hardware serial port, but serial communication is also possible using software libraries to emulate additional ports (communication channels) to provide connectivity to more than one device. Software serial requires a lot of help from the Arduino controller to send and receive data, so it’s not as fast or efficient as hardware serial. The Arduino Mega has four hardware serial ports that can communicate with up to four different serial devices. Only one of these has a USB adapter built in (you could wire a USB-TTL adapter to any of the other serial ports). Shows the port names and pins used for all of the Mega serial ports.

Software Serial You will usually use the built-in Arduino serial library to communicate with the hardware serial ports. Serial libraries simplify the use of the serial ports by insulating you from hardware complexities.

Sometimes you need more serial ports than the number of hardware serial ports available. If this is the case, you can use an additional library that uses software to emulate serial hardware. Recipes and show how to use a software serial library to communicate with multiple devices. Serial Message Protocol The hardware or software serial libraries handle sending and receiving information. This information often consists of groups of variables that need to be sent together. For the information to be interpreted correctly, the receiving side needs to recognize where each message begins and ends. Meaningful serial communication, or any kind of machine-to-machine communication, can only be achieved if the sending and receiving sides fully agree how information is organized in the message.

The formal organization of information in a message and the range of appropriate responses to requests is called a communications protocol. Messages can contain one or more special characters that identify the start of the message—this is called the header. One or more characters can also be used to identify the end of a message—this is called the footer.

The recipes in this chapter show examples of messages in which the values that make up the body of a message can be sent in either text or binary format. Sending and receiving messages in text format involves sending commands and numeric values as human-readable letters and words. Numbers are sent as the string of digits that represent the value. For example, if the value is 1234, the characters 1, 2, 3, and 4 are sent as individual characters.

Binary messages comprise the bytes that the computer uses to represent values. Binary data is usually more efficient (requiring fewer bytes to be sent), but the data is not as human-readable as text, which makes it more difficult to debug. For example, Arduino represents 1234 as the bytes 4 and 210 (4. 256 + 210 = 1234). If the device you are connecting to sends or receives only binary data, that is what you will have to use, but if you have the choice, text messages are easier to implement and debug. There are many ways to approach software problems, and some of the recipes in this chapter show two or three different ways to achieve a similar result.

The differences (e.g., sending text instead of raw binary data) may offer a different balance between simplicity and efficiency. Where choices are offered, pick the solution that you find easiest to understand and adapt—this will probably be the first solution covered. Alternatives may be a little more efficient, or they may be more appropriate for a specific protocol that you want to connect to, but the “right way” is the one you find easiest to get working in your project. The Processing Development Environment Some of the examples in this chapter use the Processing language to send and receive serial messages on a computer talking to Arduino. Processing is a free open source tool that uses a similar development environment to Arduino. You can read more about Processing and download everything you need at the. Processing is based on the Java language, but the Processing code samples in this book should be easy to translate into other environments that support serial communications.

Processing comes with some example sketches illustrating communication between Arduino and Processing. SimpleRead is a Processing example that includes Arduino code.

In Processing, select File →Examples →Libraries →Serial →SimpleRead to see an example that reads data from the serial port and changes the color of a rectangle when a switch connected to Arduino is pressed and released. Figure 4-2. Clicking the Serial Monitor icon to see serial output Your sketch must call the Serial.begin function before it can use serial input or output. The function takes a single parameter: the desired communication speed.

You must use the same speed for the sending side and the receiving side, or you will see gobbledygook (or nothing at all) on the screen. This example and most of the others in this book use a speed of 9,600 baud ( baud is a measure of the number of bits transmitted per second). The 9,600 baud rate is approximately 1,000 characters per second.

You can send at lower or higher rates (the range is 300 to 115,200), but make sure both sides use the same speed. The Serial Monitor sets the speed using the baud rate drop down (at the bottom right of the Serial Monitor window in ). If your output looks something like this: `3??f. Note If your sending and receiving serial speeds are set correctly but you are still getting unreadable text, check that you have the correct board selected in the IDE Tools →Board menu. If you have selected the wrong board, change it to the correct one and upload to the board again. You can display text using the Serial.print function.

Strings (text within double quotes) will be printed as is (but without the quotes). For example, the following code: Serial.print('The number is '); prints this: The number is The values (numbers) that you print depend on the type of variable; see for more about this. But for now, printing an integer will print its numeric value, so if the variable number is 1, the following code: Serial.println(number); will print this: 1 In the example sketch, the number printed will be 0 when the loop starts and will increase by one each time through the loop. The ln at the end of println causes the next print statement to start on a new line. That should get you started printing text and the decimal value of integers.

See for more detail on print formatting options. You may want to consider a third-party terminal program that has more features than Serial Monitor. Displaying data in text or binary format (or both), displaying control characters, and logging to a file are just a few of the additional capabilities available from the many third-party terminal programs. Here are some that have been recommended by Arduino users. An open source terminal program for Linux A free executable for the PC An open source virtual screen management program that supports serial communications; included with Linux and Mac OS X Another open source terminal program for Linux An open source SSH program for Windows; supports serial communications An open source terminal program for the PC A shareware program for the Mac In addition, an article in the Arduino wiki explains how to configure Linux to communicate with Arduino using TTY (see ). You can use a liquid crystal display as a serial output device, although it will be very limited in functionality.

Check the documentation to see how your display handles carriage returns, as some displays may not automatically advance to a new line after println statements. Discussion Printing a text string is simple: Serial.print('hello world'); sends the text string “hello world” to a device at the other end of the serial port. If you want your output to print a new line after the output, use Serial.println instead of Serial.print. Printing numeric values can be more complicated.

The way that byte and integer values are printed depends on the type of variable and an optional formatting parameter. The Arduino language is very easygoing about how you can refer to the value of different data types (see for more on data types). But this flexibility can be confusing, because even when the numeric values are similar, the compiler considers them to be separate types with different behaviors. For example, printing a char will not necessarily produce the same output as printing an int of the same value. Here are some specific examples; all of them create variables that have similar values: char asciiValue = 'A'; // ASCII A has a value of 65 char chrValue = 65; // an 8 bit character, this also is ASCII 'A' int intValue = 65; // a 16 bit integer set to a value of 65 float floatValue = 65.0; // float with a value of 65 shows what you will see when you print variables using Arduino routines.

Data type Print ( val) Print ( val,DEC) Print ( val,BYTE) Print ( val,HEX) Print ( val,OCT) Print ( val,BIN) char A 65 A 41 1 int 65 65 A 41 1 long Format of long is the same as int float 65.00 Formatting not supported for floating-point values double 65.00 double is the same as float The sketch in this recipe uses a separate line of source code for each print statement. This can make complex print statements bulky. For example, to print the following line: At 5 seconds: speed = 17, distance = 120 you’d typically have to code it like this: Serial.print('At '); Serial.print(seconds); Serial.print(' seconds: speed = '); Serial.print(speed); Serial.print(', distance = '); Serial.println(distance); That’s a lot of code lines for a single line of output. You could combine them like this: Serial.print('At '); Serial.print(seconds); Serial.print(' seconds, speed = '); Serial.print(speed); Serial.print(', distance = ');Serial.println(distance); Or you could use the insertion-style capability of the compiler used by Arduino to format your print statements. You can take advantage of some advanced C capabilities (streaming insertion syntax and templates) that you can use if you declare a streaming template in your sketch. This is most easily achieved by including the Streaming library developed by Mikal Hart.

You can read more about this library and download the code from. If you use the Streaming library, the following gives the same output as the lines shown earlier: Serial. Discussion Converting the received ASCII characters to numeric values may not be obvious if you are not familiar with the way ASCII represents characters. The following converts the character ch to its numeric value: blinkRate = (ch - '0'); // ASCII value converted to numeric value This is done by subtracting 48, because 48 is the ASCII value of the digit 0. For example, if ch is representing the character 1, its ASCII value is 49.

The expression 49- '0' is the same as 49-48. This equals 1, which is the numeric value of the character 1. In other words, the expression (ch - '0') is the same as (ch - 48); this converts the ASCII value of the variable ch to a numeric value. To get a clearer idea of the relationship between the ASCII values of characters representing the digits 0 through 9 and their actual numeric values, see the ASCII table in. Receiving numbers with more than one digit involves accumulating characters until a character that is not a valid digit is detected. The following code uses the same setup and blink functions as those shown earlier, but it gets digits until the newline character is received.

It uses the accumulated value to set the blink rate. Discussion The code in this recipe’s Solution will send the following text string to the serial port ( r indicates a carriage return and n indicates a line feed): H10,100,1000, r n You must choose a separating character that will never occur within actual data; if your data consists only of numeric values, a comma is a good choice for a delimiter.

You may also want to ensure that the receiving side can determine the start of a message to make sure it has all the data for all the fields. You do this by sending a header character to indicate the start of the message. The header character must also be unique; it should not appear within any of the data fields and it must also be different from the separator character. The example here uses an uppercase H to indicate the start of the message. The message consists of the header, three comma-separated numeric values as ASCII strings, and a carriage return and line feed.

The carriage return and line-feed characters are sent whenever Arduino prints using the println function, and this is used to help the receiving side know that the full message string has been received. A comma is sent after the last numerical value to aid the receiving side in detecting the end of the value. The Processing code reads the message as a string and uses the Java split method to create an array from the comma-separated fields.

Boolean find(char.target); Reads from the stream until the given target is found. It returns true if the target string is found.

A return of false means the data has not been found anywhere in the stream and that there is no more data available. Note that TextFinder takes a single pass through the stream; there is no way to go back to try to find or get something else (see the findUntil method). Boolean findUntil(char.target, char.terminate); Similar to the find method, but the search will stop if the terminate string is found. Returns true only if the target is found. This is useful to stop a search on a keyword or terminator.

For example: finder.findUntil('target', ' n'); will try to seek to the string 'value', but will stop at a newline character so that your sketch can do something else if the target is not found. Long getValue; Returns the first valid (long) integer value.

Leading characters that are not digits or a minus sign are skipped. The integer is terminated by the first nondigit character following the number. If no digits are found, the function returns 0. Long getValue(char skipChar); Same as getValue, but the given skipChar within the numeric value is ignored.

This can be helpful when parsing a single numeric value that uses a comma between blocks of digits in large numbers, but bear in mind that text values formatted with commas cannot be parsed as a comma-separated string. Float getFloat; The float version of getValue. Int getString(char.prestring,char.poststring,char.buf,int length); Finds the prestring and then puts the incoming characters into the given buffer until the poststring is detected. The end of the string is determined by a match of a character to the first char poststring. Strings longer than the given length are truncated to fit. The function returns the number of characters placed in the buffer ( 0 means no valid data was found). Variable size Make sure the size of the data being sent is the same on both sides.

An integer is 2 bytes on Arduino, 4 bytes on most other platforms. Always check your programming language’s documentation on data type size to ensure agreement. There is no problem with receiving a 2-byte Arduino integer as a 4-byte integer in Processing as long as Processing expects to get only two bytes. But be sure that the sending side does not use values that will overflow the type used by the receiving side. Byte order Make sure the bytes within an int or long are sent in the same order expected by the receiving side. Synchronization Ensure that your receiving side can recognize the beginning and end of a message.

If you start listening in the middle of a transmission stream, you will not get valid data. This can be achieved by sending a sequence of bytes that won’t occur in the body of a message. For example, if you are sending binary values from analogRead, these can only range from 0 to 1,023, so the most significant byte must be less than 4 (the int value of 1,023 is stored as the bytes 3 and 255); therefore, there will never be data with two consecutive bytes greater than 3. So, sending two bytes of 4 (or any value greater than 3) cannot be valid data and can be used to indicate the start or end of a message. Structure packing If you send or receive data as structures, check your compiler documentation to make sure the packing is the same on both sides. Packing is the padding that a compiler uses to align data elements of different sizes in a structure. Flow control Either choose a transmission speed that ensures that the receiving side can keep up with the sending side, or use some kind of flow control.

Flow control is a handshake that tells the sending side that the receiver is ready to get more data. Discussion The Processing language influenced Arduino, and the two are intentionally similar. The setup function in Processing is used to handle one-time initialization, just like in Arduino. Processing has a display window, and setup sets its size to 600 × 600 pixels with the call to size(600,600). The line String portName = Serial.listportIndex; selects the serial port—in Processing, all available serial ports are contained in the Serial.list object and this example uses the value of a variable called portIndex. Println(Serial.list) prints all the available ports, and the line myPort = new Serial(this, portName, 9600); opens the port selected as portName. Ensure that you set portIndex to the serial port that is connected to your Arduino.

The draw function in Processing works like loop in Arduino; it is called repeatedly. The code in draw checks if data is available on the serial port; if so, bytes are read and converted to the integer value represented by the bytes.

A rectangle is drawn based on the integer values received. Discussion This code is similar to the Processing code in the previous recipes, with the addition of a function called sendMessage.

In this example, the function is called with three parameters: a tag, an index, and a value. The function first sends the header character to identify the start of the message. Then the single byte index is sent, followed by the two bytes that comprise the integer value. You can make your own version of this function to send the combination of values that you need for your application. Note The Arduino team is planning to provide NewSoftSerial with future Arduino downloads.

Check the release notes for your Arduino version to see if this software is already included. Select two available digital pins, one each for transmit and receive, and connect your serial device to them. It is convenient to use the hardware serial port for communication with the computer because this has a USB adapter on the board. Connect the device’s transmit line to the receive pin and the receive line to the transmit pin.

In, we have selected pin 2 as the receive pin and pin 3 as the transmit pin. Discussion Every Arduino microcontroller contains at least one built-in serial port. This special piece of hardware is responsible for generating the series of precisely timed pulses its partner device sees as data and for interpreting the similar stream that it receives in return.

Although the Mega has four such ports, most Arduino flavors have only one. For projects that require connections to two or more serial devices, you’ll need a software library that emulates the additional ports. A “software serial” library effectively turns an arbitrary pair of digital I/O pins into a new serial port. Although one such library, SoftwareSerial, is included in every Arduino distribution, most programmers prefer to use the more powerful and feature-laden NewSoftSerial library.

NewSoftSerial supports a wider range of baud rates and uses some advanced features of the Arduino processor to ensure more reliable data reception. It also supports multiple simultaneous emulated ports. You can read more about NewSoftSerial on. Compares the features of the NewSoftSerial and SoftwareSerial libraries. Note that as of Arduino release 22, NewSoftSerial was available only as a third-party library, but future releases may include it with the base distribution. To build your software serial port, you select a pair of pins that will act as the port’s transmit and receive lines in much the same way that pins 1 and 0 are controlled by Arduino’s built-in port.

In, pins 3 and 2 are shown, but any available digital pins can be used. It’s wise to avoid using 0 and 1, because these are already being driven by the built-in port. The syntax for writing to the soft port is identical to that for the hardware port. In the example sketch, data is sent to both the “real” and emulated ports using print and println: seriallcd.print('The number is '); // send text to the LCD seriallcd.println(number); // send the number on the LCD Serial.print('The number is '); // send text to the hardware port Serial.println(number); // to output on Arduino Serial Monitor If you are using a unidirectional serial device—that is, one that only sends or receives—you can conserve resources by specifying a nonexistent pin number in the New Soft Serial constructor for the line you don’t need. For example, a serial LCD is fundamentally an output-only device. If you don’t expect (or want) to receive data from it, you can tell NewSoftSerial using this syntax: #include.

Const int nosuchpin = 255; const int txpin = 3; NewSoftSerial seriallcd(txpin, nosuchpin); // TX-only on pin 3 In this case, we would only physically connect a single pin (3) to the serial LCD’s “input” or “RX” line. Solution This problem is similar to the preceding one, and indeed the solution is much the same. If your Arduino’s serial port is connected to the console and you want to attach a second serial device, you must create an emulated port using a software serial library such as NewSoftSerial. In this case, we will be receiving data from the emulated port instead of writing to it, but the basic solution is very similar. Download NewSoftSerial from. Select two pins to use as your transmit and receive lines. Connect your GPS as shown in.

Rx (receive) is not used in this example, so you can ignore the Rx connection to pin 3 if your GPS does not have a receive pin. Discussion You initialize an emulated NewSoftSerial port by providing pin numbers for transmit and receive.

The following code will set up the port to send on pin 2 and receive on pin 3: const int rxpin = 2; // pin used to receive from GPS const int txpin = 3; // pin used to send to GPS NewSoftSerial serialgps(rxpin, txpin); // new serial port on pins 2 and 3 The syntax for reading an emulated port is very similar to that for reading from a built-in port. First check to make sure a character has arrived from the GPS with available, and then read it with read. It’s important to remember that software serial ports consume time and resources. An emulated serial port must do everything that a hardware port does, using the same processor your sketch is trying to do “real work” with.

Whenever a new character arrives, the processor must interrupt whatever it was doing to handle it. This can be time-consuming. At 4,800 baud, for example, it takes the Arduino about two milliseconds to process a single character. While two milliseconds may not sound like much, consider that if your peer device—say, the GPS unit shown earlier—transmits 200 to 250 characters per second, your sketch is spending 40 to 50 percent of its time trying to keep up with the serial input. This leaves very little time to actually process all that data.

The lesson is that if you have two serial devices, when possible connect the one with the higher bandwidth consumption to the built-in (hardware) port. If you must connect a high-bandwidth device to a software serial port, make sure the rest of your sketch’s loop is very efficient.

The easiest way to go about installing our is by starting with the device. If you want to verify that the adapter and the driver were installed properly click Connect the device to the Mac. Once connected click on the Apple icon and on ‘About This Mac’ Click on ‘More Info’ Click on ‘USB’ on the left and on the ‘USB-Serial Controller D’ If all is well you should be seeing something like this: Time to get the driver! Fire up Safari and browse to and scroll down to Mac.

Click on the ‘PL2303 MacOSX10.6 dmg v.1.4.0.zip’, the Safari Downloads window should come up: Double click on the mdPL23-3MacOSX10 Now double click on the PL23031.4.0.dmg to mount the image Now double click on the PL23031.4.0 to start the installation Once the installer comes up click ‘Continue’ to proceed. Then ‘Select a Destination’ click on your desired drive and click ‘Continue’ to move forward Now just click ‘Install’ to continue. You may be asked of your username and password – enter them and click ‘OK’ You’ll get a warning about restarting the computer after the installation is complete. This is normal, click ‘Continue Installation‘. Installing should start (takes a couple of minutes to complete) When it’s done you should see this: Click on ‘Restart’ to reboot the Mac.

After you restart, check that everything has installed OK. On the Mac there are two methods to determine this: Method 1: Click on ‘Applications’ Click on ‘Utilities’ Click on ‘Terminal’ Type: kextstat grep prolific and: ioreg -c IOSerialBSDClient grep usb Your results should be very close to this: Method 2: Click on ‘System Preferences’ Click on ‘Network’ Now click on the ‘+’ sign on the bottom left, and then on the ‘Select the interface and enter a name for the new Service’ click on ‘Interface’ – you should be seeing the ‘USB-Serial Controller D’ there. This will create a “Network” interface for a modem or serial port. Because it’s a serial port, it’ll say “Not Configured” and that’s normal: From the “Advanced” button you can change default settings (usually not needed). And this won’t change the “Not Configured” message – that’s still ok.

Now finally, you need an application which will talk to the serial port. On Mac, the file which maps to the port is /dev/cu.usbserial. If you have a null modem cable and a terminal program on the other side, the Mac actually has a built-in terminal program called “screen” that you can use to test the connection. Once that is up and connected (and if the serial ports are set to the same baud rate and paramters), you can type on either side and see the characters come across. Support USB Serial on the Mac is a real melding of the very new and very old. If you have any trouble, just visit to see existing FAQs for. Where to Buy amtap amazon:asin=B00425S1H8.

Hi Sam, we’re glad to hear you found our article helpful! Getting scrolling in screen working is a little different depending on which version of osX you’re running and requires editing screenrc, unfortunately not a single command for this that I know of. Here is the best thread I’ve found on enabling screen scrollback (and more): Here’s another thread from stack overflow that talks about some options to enable scrollback in screen: A lot of people also prefer alternative terminals like Zterm, iTerm 2, etc. Several are mentioned in the stack overflow thread.

Hi, Loaded it all up fine, however my main purpose was that so I can telnet to devices on the serial port. My question is running the telnet what would I put after the telnet command to identify the port, at the moment I have unknown-00-26-08-f5-af-f4: chrismccann$ kextstat grep prolific 85 0 0x58412000 0x8000 0x7000 com.prolific.driver.PL2303 (2.0.0) unknown-00-26-08-f5-af-f4: chrismccann$ ioreg -c IOSerialBSDClient grep usb “IOTTYBaseName” = “usbserial” “IOCalloutDevice” = “/dev/cu.usbserial” “IODialinDevice” = “/dev/tty.usbserial” “IOTTYDevice” = “usbserial” typically telnet com1 or an IP is put in, but for this device what would I use. Many thanks, Chris. I wonder if anybody knows if there is any issues with the commonly available usb to serial cables that are so commonly purchased unwittingly that are a clone of the official pl2303. Prolific seem to be deliberately isolating compatibility against these devices in the newest Windows drivers, and wondered if thats the same with the mac drivers. Its just not worth wasting time putting in drivers to have to fight them out again when prolific deliberately make them to not work.

Bah humbug @ prolific, not fair to cause issues for consumers when they should target the clone chip manufacturers directly!. Jeff Everett.

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Hi Denis- Thanks for posting with your question. Indeed we can confirm that on Windows, there is code to check and prevent the Prolific driver from working with a counterfeit chip. As far as we know the check is only built into the Windows driver, we’re not certain if this is the same for OS X. Sorry we can’t provide more info here- I’d try and test on a lab mac but we don’t have any of the counterfeit cables lying around, only ours, the ones we know work 😉 If you have one of the counterfeit cables and find that these instructions don’t work, please post back for the benefit of all. Again, thanks for posting with your question. Best wishes- Jeff.

Bernie Thompson. Hi Frustrated- The short answer here is that you’ll need to make sure you’re properly terminating any applications or connections using the USB serial device to avoid this issue. We’ve actually seen this across platforms (Windows as well) and are communicating the issue back to Prolific, however in the meantime carefully exiting out of applications and killing processes where needed is your best workaround in the meantime. Here’s a more detailed explanation as to why: Best wishes- Jeff Everett MCITP Enterprise Support Tech Plugable Technologies. Alex.

After following these directions, and the install of the PL23031.4.0 appearing to be successful, I do not see the USB serial monitor option anywhere. Whether I look on system preferences under network or in terminal. In system preferences/netowrk, when I attempt to add a something, there is no USB option as indicated on this page. In Terminal, all I see is /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem /dev/tty.usbmodemfa141 /dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync I believe the usb/tty.usbmodemfa141 is the Arduino USB driver I previously installed. But I never see a USBserial device or driver.

I have an Xbee module and Xbee adaptor connected to the computer via a USB cable. This is on a Macbook Pro running 10.6.8 also using CoolTerm I never see the USBserial option, only the USBmodem141 option. Thans very much for any help, I’ve been struggling with connecting to these Xbee modules for a few weeks now. Jordan. Jeff Everett. Hi Jordan (and any others who might be reading this)- One reason our instructions would not work is if you have purchased an FTDI chipset based USB Serial Device.

Another common reason for the symptoms you describe would be trying to add the USB Serial Device to network connections when the cable isn’t connected to the system. If the Prolific Driver installer works without an error, then the commands below should return values similar to those listed above when run with the adapter connected: kextstat grep prolific and: ioreg -c IOSerialBSDClient grep usb If you are not seeing the expected output from these commands, please verify that your adapter matches the 3rd photo in our post, showing the entry in system profile: If your adapter does not match this entry, our instructions unfortunately will not be relevant for your adapter.

If these instructions don’t work, please email with your Amazon order ID for further support. Best wishes- Jeff. Pacman. I’m trying to use a PL2303 USB-to-Serial cable with my Olimex SAM7-P256 board. I have the Prolific driver installed, and the device is recognized and appears as /dev/cu.usbserial The board has a standard RS232 port.

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It seems that no matter what I do, I get ‘gibberish’ characters. I’ve calculated the baudrate several times, it should be close to 9600 baud (9595) on the microcontroller. On my PowerMac G5, I tried using the network control panel to change the baud-rate, but no matter which rate I select, there is no change in the gibberish characters. The characters.only.

changes when I change the baudrate on my microcontroller board, not on the computer. I also tried using cu –parity=none -s 9600 -l /dev/cu.usbserial dir -But I still don’t see the characters I’m sending from the microcontroller. Which end really controls the baud-rate, the one at the RS232 plug end or the one at the USB-plug end? I am sure I can’t help you, because I gave up on my microcontroller communication, but I’d like to tell you what I would try (if you haven’t tried it already): 1: Try unplugging your USB-to-Serial adapter. 2: Open the terminal, type (without the $): $ ls /dev grep usbserial 3: You should see nothing after the above line, now plug in your USB-to-Serial adapter, then type $ ls /dev grep usbserial You should see ‘cu.usbserial’ and ‘tty.usbserial’. If you see those two device names, I believe you should contact the manufacturer of the UPS.

If you do not see the two device names, your USB-to-Serial adapter might be defective. Try verifying on a friends computer. OK, let’s assume you see the two device names. Open your “System Preferences”, then click your “USB-Serial Controller D” (or whatever it’s called), click the - button in the bottom of the panel (to remove it!), click “Apply” and quit System Preferences. Try your UPS software again and see if it works now. You’ve come a long way already.

It seems your USB-to-Serial adapter is working. Did you also try removing the interface in the System Preferences? Why would you want to do that? Answer: Because exactly this might conflict with the UPS software. If it still doesn’t work, add it back in, also try configuring the baudrate to 9600 baud.

Another thing: Try asking the UPS vendor if the name of the serial port is important. You verify that your USB-to-Serial adapter works by connecting either a modem or another computer via a null-modem cable (eg.

A cable where only GND is connected and Rx is connected to Tx and Tx is connected to Rx; that’s all that’s necessary). Then open a terminal window on your Mac OS X machine and type $ cat /dev/cu.usbserial If you’ve connected another Mac OS X machine with another USB-to-Serial adapter, you can type $ echo “Hello” /dev/cu.usbserial Then the text should appear in the ‘cat’ window. You could also run for a ‘terminal program’ (I think PuTTY will work) on a PC and configure it to 9600 baud, 8N1. Or if you have an easier way, just use that; eg. If you have an old 9600 baud Hayes modem, it would be fine for such tests.Hmm I actually have an old Hayes modem here, I could go and see if it works with my adapter. =) Also try and look in your manual for the UPS and read what it says about compatibility on the RS232 port. The vendor might have the manual available as a PDF download.

I just searched the Web and it seems I’ve found their site. Try this page: -There are 3 interesting links: Product Information, Support and Service, “Customer Issues Department” and “Request technical assistance on product(s) already in use”. Perhaps the first one or the last one is most relevant.

I’m not sure I can come up with other ideas, but perhaps someone else reading this might have a few suggestions. Thanks so much for all your input. I’ve tried everything.

The interface wasn’t in the System Preferences to begin with so I added it and used different configurations, I also assigned the baudrate to 9600 baud, but still won’t detect there is an ‘Auto-search for UPS’ feature in the software of the UPS and this shows up in the terminal: “Broadcast Message from (no tty) at 23:21 EST UPS Monitoring Software Message: Communication Lost: check connection and port setting. ” It can’t detect the tty So i guess the UPS doesn’t support the adapter? I think there’s no problem with the UPS hardware.

RS232 is RS232; it’s the same all over the World with all devices; fortunately it’s not messed up like most other standards. 😉 -But the problem is with the software. Having written software for a PL2303 device myself, I know that there are a few things to do, to write the software properly.

One thing.not. to do when writing software, is to use ‘/dev/somename’, because this changes like the weather; different device, different name. There might be one more thing left to try If you right-click on your software application, you’ll see the “Show Package Contents” in the contextual menu.

Choose this menu item. You’ll now see a folder called “Contents”, open it. In this folder, there might be more than one interesting file. You’ll have to do a bit of hunting yourself, but one thing I can suggest, is that you try dragging “Info.plist” onto your TextEdit application and look at the contents. Try and see if you can find a name of a serial port in there.

If there’s nothing interesting in that file, try looking inside the “Resources” folder. Files ending in.plist are usually the places where the developer would store such things, which could be tweaked or changed without re-compiling the application. From the terminal, you can also trying CD’ing to the application’s Contents folder and do a $ grep -R -i “serial”. if nothnig found, try “tty” instead of serial. Still nothing? -try “rs232” or “uart” or “usart”. (Just a thought: I find it a bit weird, if the UPS vendor writes sofware to communicate with the UPS via RS232 and the same vendor does not mention anything at all about compatibility or how to actually connect the UPS in the manual – because why then use several months/years on writing the software?

-But I guess some companies want to be strange.). James. Thanks for posting! The USB serial adapter is not working with the current version of OSX 10.11, as you have discovered. El Capitan is still very much in development, and it is normal at this stage for drivers to not work, then start working again as Apple addresses various functions in each new release. Apple doesn’t give much information to third party developers that allow them to understand the changes Apple is making, and often we can’t know for sure until the final release version is made available shortly before the public release what, if any, driver changes will be needed. If the driver doesn’t work in the final version, we will immediately begin looking for work-arounds while working with the chip maker, Prolific to develop a driver that does work.

I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but as long as El Capitan is in beta, we won’t be able to guarantee support for it. The enemy is called SIP.

A newly integrated feature which does in fact prevents any unsigned KEXT to be loaded. This means the Profilic driver is shown in the system overview but does in fact have no KEXT loaded to make this thing work. I’ve found a workaround which is kinda annoying and does in fact work only as long as you don’t plug any other USB devices into the port after getting the adapter to work. This means: If you use the routine i’ll describe in a few moments you have to be aware that after you plug any other USB device into the port you’re using the profilic with you have to REDO all these STEPS!!!!! @Mitchell Yes it still doeas have the issue with 10.11.1.

I found out that if you leave SIP disabled the whole time you can use it normally with having to do my described steps once. This has been the case here and i thought i had turned it back on which gave the impression as if they’ve had fixed it. Unfortunately you have to stick to my procedure described above but if you leave SIP disabled you can plug in any usb device afterwards it will still work. If you reenable SIP you have to do everthing again, as soon as you plug a different device in. I hope this driver gets signed soon with apple because it is a pain in the a.

This method works with any unsigned driver!!! If you have a non working USB device check the /System/Library/Extensions path for a.kext file with the name of your device. If you find it there and your device is not working you can be sure its a signature problem. Just use the commands i described above and change the filename of the.kext to the filename you need. This helped me very often to get things going.

Apple should really overthink it signature policy. It’s just annoying 🙁. Charlie. Hi Doug, If you have the Plugable adapter, the latest driver for OS X is properly signed and there is no need to turn off SIP in order to install it. If you are having problems getting it installed, please contact us at and we can help. However, reading your previous comment, it looks like SIP isn’t the problem, since SIP will prevent the installation if there is a problem with the driver. More likely there is some configuration issue or connection problem with the Dell switch.

A good place to start is to make sure you have the right cable (Null modem or straight) and the correct port settings. If Dell provides a cable, it is usually best to use that one.

Doug Lewis.