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Is it possible to call the Python serial library as a function in an imported module when communicating with an Arduino?

I am writing a program to communicate between my laptop (Python) and an Arduino. The Arduino code, with which I have no issue, reads the serial data form my laptop and returns a reply. The code below works when I am calling the function which starts the serial communication from within the same file. However, when I import the file as a module in another file, using lal the same commands, it does not work!
To provide more detail, although Python thinks it has connected and even prints out the correct port number, it does not really connect. I know this because in the scenario that does work, when the serial communication is open, the Arduino IDE cannot speak to the Arduino as the Arduino is busy. However in the scenario which is not working, even after Python thinks it has opened serial communication, the Arduino IDE can still communicate with the Arduino.
Is there a way to pass the ser variable when called from a function in an imported module?
def connect():
for n in range(0,21):
try:
ser = serial.Serial('COM'+str(n), 115200 ,timeout=0.1)
status=1
port=n
return ser,port,status
except:
pass
time.sleep(0.05)
return 0, 0, 0
if __name__ == "__main__":
ser,port,status=connect()
n=0
while n<3:
num = input("Enter a word: ") # Taking input from user
ser.write(bytes(num, 'utf-8'))
time.sleep(0.05)
data = ser.readline()
print(data) # printing the value
n+=1
ser.close()
print('closed')

I have found the reason my code was not working! Notice in the code I posted, I use the input function to get a user input which is sent to the Arduino. This effectively results in a delay. In the scenario that was not working, I did not use the input function and so my code went straight from serial.serial to serial.write. The Arduino runs at 16 MHz and just couldn't keep up! All I needed to do was add a delay and now it works!

Multitasking Python-Arduino Communication

I am doing a project where I have to acquire data from an Arduino Uno connected to various sensors using Python on Windows (and eventually in Raspberry Pi 2 Model B).
As Python would constantly be listening to Arduino, I was thinking how should I let Python be always ready to read in a user input (any keyboard keys or even better, with a push-button if this is possible) after which Python will tell Arduino Uno to re-acquire data from all the sensors (i.e. refresh data from the sensors) and print it on the Python Console. I am currently using PyCharm with pySerial for communications between Arduino and Python. My code (without considering user input) is as of below:
import sys
import serial
import time
arduino = serial.Serial('COM3', 9600, timeout=1)
time.sleep(3) # wait for Arduino to initialize
def readData(): # reads inputs from Arduino
try:
datastring = arduino.readline()
print datastring
except:
pass
while True:
readData()
strin = 'p'
arduino.write(strin.encode()) # tell arduino a phase shifter setting has been finished
strin = 's'
arduino.write(strin.encode())
arduino.close()
time.sleep(0.5) # waits for 0.5 s
# print('Data to be transfered: %s'%ASCIIdata)
I understand that related topics have been posted before, however, I have tried the solutions online to no avail and I am finding it quite difficult to code as I am very new to Python. (I am reading documentation and examples and trying to code at the moment.)
Currently, I have done some research on this topic and have tried the following methods but to no avail:
Using msvcrt, getch and using nodelay(1) to allow my program to run even when no user input is received. I used "stdscr", and curses, to which I used "stdscr = curses.initscr()", however, in PyCharm, as it is an IDE, it returned an error "Redirection is not supported." My attempt at implementing this is as of below:
def readData(): # reads inputs from Arduino
try:
datastring = arduino.readline()
print datastring
except:
pass
while True:
stdscr = curses.initscr()
stdscr.nodelay(1)
user_input = stdscr.getch()
if user_input == -1:
readData()
I understand there is multithreading in Python and a number of leads lead me to think that it should be the way to go if I want to listen to user inputs continuously while still acquiring data from Arduino. May I ask if this is the correct direction in which I should pursue?
I have heard about select() and poll() though the former isn't supported on Windows. I will try select() when I port my program over to Raspberry Pi which runs on Linux.
May I ask if anyone can point me to a direction on how to implement a program that reads data continuously from Arduino in PyCharm, and but a user input will cause everything to stop (like an interrupt) and have Python (PyCharm) ask Arduino to pass it a set of fresh sensor data?
Thank you! :)

Errors in the data received through serial using Python

I want to send data to a peripheral using PySerial. However, errors sometime appear in the data received.
import serial
dongle = serial.Serial("/dev/ttyUSB0", 9600)
dongle.write("Some data\n")
And then, Some data\n is transmitted to the peripheral.
Sometime it works great, but sometime, errors appear in the data received: Somata\n, Som a\n, etc…
How to fix that issue?

I suspect you need to add an inter-char delay to your serial write. Unfortunately, such a thing is not available in PySerial. There is an inter_byte_timeout, but that's for reads.
Something like:
import serial
import time
def write_with_delay(command):
while len(command)>0: # Loop till all of string has been sent
char_to_tx = command[0] # Get a
dongle.write(char_to_tx)
command = command[1:] # Remove sent character
time.sleep(0.01)
dongle = serial.Serial("/dev/ttyUSB0", 9600)
write_with_delay('Some data\n')
Which will send the string with a 10ms (0.01s) delay between each character. Ordinarily, adding arbitrary delays into code is a bad thing, but for serial comms it is sometimes necessary.

Reset an open serial port

I am reading data from a serial port, sent by an arduino.
I have two files, which I use separately to write some code and try differents things. In one of them, I read the data and I draw it using a matplotlib figure. After I finish using it, it remains connected to my computer and sending data. So, what i need to do is to "reset" the port. This is, close the opened port and open it again, and stop it from sending data so I can use the arduino to try some modifications in the code of this file.
So to accomplish this, i mean, to reset the port, i created another file and wrote this code:
import serial
print "Opening port"
try:
serial_port = serial.Serial("com4", 9600)
print "Port is open"
except serial.SerialException:
serial.Serial("com4", 9600).close()
print "Port is closed"
serial_port = serial.Serial("com4",9600)
print "Port is open again"
print "Ready to use"
But this code does not seems to work.The port is still connected and sending data. So, it means that I can not close the port with my code,and then reopen it again.
What am i doing wrong? How can I stop the arduino from sending data? Or how can I reset thw arduino, maybe?
Hope you can help me.
----- EDIT -----
I accomplish to identify the real problem that i am having, and it is not what i thought. The problem was not that the port was open despite that i use the closefunction that Pyserial have. The real thing is that the port is closing as I want, but the device (the arduino) is still sending data. So, i changed the code to reproduce the situation.
This is the code:
print "Abriendo puerto"
ser = serial
try:
ser = serial.Serial("com4", 9600, timeout = 1)
serial_port = "Open"
print "The port %s is available" %ser
except serial.serialutil.SerialException:
print "The port is at use"
ser.close()
ser.open()
while ser.read():
print "Sending data"
ser.setBreak(True)
time.sleep(0.2)
ser.sendBreak(duration = 0.02)
time.sleep(0.2)
ser.close()
time.sleep(0.2)
print "The port is closed"
exit()
With this code, what i do is:
1) I open the serial port
2) If the device is sending data, I print "Sending data"
3) After 1 sec, I try to close the port and stop the device from sending data
I tried these last two thing with the close function to close the port, and reading the docs I tried with setBreak and sendBreak as you can see in the code above (i left them on purpose). But the device is still sending the data, which means that the code does not work.
So, is there a way to tell the arduino "stop sending data", or can i reset the device?

I do a very similar thing, two ways with success.
The first way is to let the Arduino send data continuously. The problem here is when your python code wakes up and starts to read from the serial port, the Arduino might be anywhere in its procedures. The simple solution is to modify the Arduino code to send some kind of "restarting" line. All your python code needs to do in this case is wait for "restart", then read real data until it again sees "restart". I had noisy lines so my code read (and parsed) through multiple cycles to make sure it got good data.
resetCount = 0;
while resetCount < 3:
line = s.readline().rstrip("\r\n")
if string.find(line, "restart") != -1 :
resetCount += 1
elif resetCount > 0 :
fields = string.split(line, " ")
dict[fields[0]] = fields
The second way is to implement a command-response protocol with the Arduino, wherein the Arduino sends data only when requested. In this case your python code sends a command to the Arduino ("RT" in the example below) and then reads data from the Arduino until it sees a "completed" line or it times out.
dict = {}
regex = re.compile('28-[0-9A-Fa-f]{12}') # 28-000005eaa80e
s = serial.Serial('/dev/ttyS0', 9600, timeout=5)
s.write("RT\n");
while True:
line = s.readline().rstrip("\r\n")
print line
if string.find(line, "completed") != -1:
break;
fields = string.split(line)
if (regex.match(fields[0]) != None and len(fields) == 4) :
dict[fields[0]] = fields
s.close()

It is possible that when you close the port, data is still coming from the arduino and being buffered by the operating system. There is a short delay between your script calling close() and the device driver actually shutting stuff down.
An immediate re-open may allow the driver to carry on without resetting its buffer. This is the device driver buffer, not the one seen by the Python serial port instance.
If you wait for at least a couple of seconds after the call to close() before you try to call open() then the behaviour should be as you hope.
I have just spent most of the day working out that this is what had been preventing my code from working properly.

I think you have to do a serial_port.open() immediately after creation to actually open the port.
It also looks like it just opens the port and exits if successful. Maybe I'm missing something here. I've never used pySerial, I'm just going by the docs.

Try using the handle to close the port instead of invoking the constructor again.
If you the port is open and you call serial.Serial("com4", 9600) it will attempt to re-open the port again and fail.
If serial_port was assigned successfully then serial_port.close() should close it.

Clash of connection between serial port read and write codes

This is the code that reads from the z1 mote
while True:
if not ser.isOpen():
try:
ser = serial.Serial(z1port, z1baudrate,timeout=0, parity=serial.PARITY_NONE,
stopbits=serial.STOPBITS_ONE, bytesize=serial.EIGHTBITS)
except:
sys.exit("Error connecting device")
queue = ser.inWaiting()
if queue > 0:
data = ser.read(1000)
print data
time.sleep(0.2)
And this is the code that I have that I use it to write to the mote
# some event-driven code here so that whenever a message is received then do:
print(str(msg.payload))
ser = serial.Serial("/dev/ttyUSB1")
print ser.isOpen()
ser.write(msg.payload)
The output from the second code should be if msg.payload = "hello":
hello
True
But then the read code stops reading from the serial port (the code will run but no input). How do I solve this problem?

You can only create one serial connection to a device. The code in your question creates two connections, one in the main routine and one in the subroutine. In the main routine, you create a connection to establish communication with the device:
ser = serial.Serial(z1port, z1baudrate) # I assume z1port='/dev/ttyUSB1'
Then in your subroutine you also create a connection:
ser = serial.Serial("/dev/ttyUSB1")
So there are now two connections trying to use the same port. This will not work.
Instead, you should use the original connection throughout your program,
and define your subroutines to receive the connection as an input parameter. For example:
ser = serial.Serial(z1port, z1baudrate)
# do whatever to make connection to the device
getMessage(ser) # call subroutine to read data *with the existing connection*
ser.close() # close connection when finished
def getMessage(serConn):
# read data
data = serConn.read(1000)
# send ack
serConn.write(b'OK')
Another option is to open and close serial connections throughout your code, whenever you need to do communication. This is usually much less efficient, and only makes sense if there will only be intermittent communication with the device.

I used the idea by #mhopeng to write a code that implements multithreading programming, where one function handles the reading and the other handles the writing. And before they are both called, I will connect to the serial port and pass it to both of the threads.
I had to use multithreading because I needed a separate thread for writing at any time from the user input.