pyserial - How to Read Last Line Sent from Serial Device

Question

So I have an Arduino connected to my Windows XP computer. It's just running a loop, sending a value over the serial port back to the computer every 100ms.

I want to make a Python script that will read from the serial port only every few seconds, so I want it to just see the last thing sent from the Arduino.

How do you do this in Pyserial?

Here's the code I tried which does't work. It reads the lines sequentially.

import serial
import time

ser = serial.Serial('com4',9600,timeout=1)
while 1:
    time.sleep(10)
    print ser.readline() #how to get most recent line sent from device?

Answer 1

from serial import *
from threading import Thread

last_received = ''

def receiving(ser):
    global last_received
    buffer = ''

    while True:
        # last_received = ser.readline()
        buffer += ser.read(ser.inWaiting())
        if '\n' in buffer:
            last_received, buffer = buffer.split('\n')[-2:]

if __name__ ==  '__main__':
    ser = Serial(
        port=None,
        baudrate=9600,
        bytesize=EIGHTBITS,
        parity=PARITY_NONE,
        stopbits=STOPBITS_ONE,
        timeout=0.1,
        xonxoff=0,
        rtscts=0,
        interCharTimeout=None
    )

    Thread(target=receiving, args=(ser,)).start()

Answer 2

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your question, but as it's a serial line, you'll have to read everything sent from the Arduino sequentially - it'll be buffered up in the Arduino until you read it.

If you want to have a status display which shows the latest thing sent - use a thread which incorporates the code in your question (minus the sleep), and keep the last complete line read as the latest line from the Arduino.

Update: mtasic's example code is quite good, but if the Arduino has sent a partial line when inWaiting() is called, you'll get a truncated line. Instead, what you want to do is to put the last complete line into last_received, and keep the partial line in buffer so that it can be appended to the next time round the loop. Something like this:

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 Arduino 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]

Regarding use of readline(): Here's what the Pyserial documentation has to say (slightly edited for clarity):

Be careful when using "readline". Do specify a timeout when opening the serial port, otherwise it could block forever if no newline character is received. Also note that "readline" only works with a timeout. It depends on having a timeout and interprets that as EOF (end of file).

which seems quite reasonable to me!

Answer 3

You will need a loop to read everything sent, with the last call to readline() blocking until the timeout. So:

def readLastLine(ser):
    last_data=''
    while True:
        data=ser.readline()
        if data!='':
            last_data=data
        else:
            return last_data

Answer 4

Slight modification to mtasic & Vinay Sajip's code:

While I found this code quite helpful to me for a similar application, I needed all the lines coming back from a serial device that would send information periodically.

I opted to pop the first element off the top, record it, and then rejoin the remaining elements as the new buffer and continue from there.

I realize that this is not what Greg was asking for, but I thought it was worth sharing as a side note.

def receiving(ser):
    global last_received

    buffer = ''
    while True:
        buffer = buffer + ser.read(ser.inWaiting())
        if '\n' in buffer:
            lines = buffer.split('\n')
            last_received = lines.pop(0)

            buffer = '\n'.join(lines)

Answer 5

These solutions will hog the CPU while waiting for characters.

You should do at least one blocking call to read(1)

while True:
    if '\n' in buffer: 
        pass # skip if a line already in buffer
    else:
        buffer += ser.read(1)  # this will block until one more char or timeout
    buffer = buffer + ser.read(ser.inWaiting()) # get remaining buffered chars

...and do the split thing as before.

Answer 6

Hello I a beginner to python. I interfaced kuka robort to pc. My boss told me to communicate with it.comunnication is via RS232 I wrote a program in controller. It sarts only when i send a string "NEXT" in pc i wrote a small program in python to send 'NEXT'.

import serial

import time

ser=serial.Serial(port='COM1',baudrate=19200,parity='E',timeout=None, xonxoff=0, rtscts=0)

ser.open()

x=ser.write("NEXT")

ser.close()

Then my robot moves correspondly and transmits a character '01'.
I would like to know how to read a character transmitted by controller. I used the above program but no use. Could please help me in finding this....

thanks in advance...