Programmatically talking to a Serial Port in OS X or Linux

Question

I have a Prolite LED sign that I like to set up to show scrolling search queries from a apache logs and other fun statistics. The problem is, my G5 does not have a serial port, so I have to use a usb to serial dongle. It shows up as /dev/cu.usbserial and /dev/tty.usbserial .

When i do this everything seems to be hunky-dory:

stty -f /dev/cu.usbserial
speed 9600 baud;
lflags: -icanon -isig -iexten -echo
iflags: -icrnl -ixon -ixany -imaxbel -brkint
oflags: -opost -onlcr -oxtabs
cflags: cs8 -parenb

Everything also works when I use the serial port tool to talk to it.

If I run this piece of code while the above mentioned serial port tool, everthing also works. But as soon as I disconnect the tool the connection gets lost.

#!/usr/bin/python

import serial

ser = serial.Serial('/dev/cu.usbserial', 9600, timeout=10) 
ser.write("<ID01><PA> \r\n") 
read_chars = ser.read(20)
print read_chars

ser.close()

So the question is, what magicks do I need to perform to start talking to the serial port without the serial port tool? Is that a permissions problem? Also, what's the difference between /dev/cu.usbserial and /dev/tty.usbserial?

---

Nope, no serial numbers. The thing is, the problem persists even with sudo-running the python script, and the only thing that makes it go through if I open the connection in the gui tool that I mentioned.

Answer 1

/dev/cu.xxxxx is the "callout" device, it's what you use when you establish a connection to the serial device and start talking to it. /dev/tty.xxxxx is the "dialin" device, used for monitoring a port for incoming calls for e.g. a fax listener.