How to use COM and USB ports within Cygwin

arduinocygwinpyserialserial-portusb

I want to send/receive data from my Arduino board with a Python script. I would like to do it using Python and its pySerial module which seems to fit my needs. So I installed Python and pySerial within cygwin (windows XP behind).

The Python script is rather straightforward:

$ cat example.py

#print "testing my COM26 port using python"

import serial
ser = serial.Serial()
ser.baudrate = 9600
ser.port = 26
ser
ser.open()
ser.isOpen()

However at runtime I get the following error.

$ python example.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "example.py", line 9, in <module>
    ser.open()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/serial/serialposix.py", line 276, in open
    raise SerialException("could not open port %s: %s" % (self._port, msg))
serial.serialutil.SerialException: could not open port 26: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/com27'

Could not open port 26: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/com27'

How do I know my Arduino is connected to port COM27?

Well, it's simple. The Arduino IDE says so, I can send and receive data from the Serial Port Monitor tool for the IDE using that port. Besides, I managed to get the hyperterminal working using that port too.

However, it seems Cygwin is not aware of such USB and COM ports:

$ ls -lah /dev
total 4,0K
.
..
fd -> /proc/self/fd
mqueue
shm
stderr -> /proc/self/fd/2
stdin -> /proc/self/fd/0
stdout -> /proc/self/fd/1

It should be mentioned that I am running this on a Dell laptop that has no classic serial COM port, just USB ports. (So I guess it's plain normal for instance that /dev/com1 does not exist.)

I don't know if I'm asking correctly, but my question is: how can I configure Cygwin so that it becomes aware of this COM27 port?

Best Answer

If Hyperterminal can access it, then it's installed as a "virtual COM port". Cygwin will let you access it as /dev/ttyS26 (called COM27 by Windows). You may still have an issue with the input blocking until a CR is received--I do. (Trying to solve that, is how I found this.)

Related Solutions

Windows – the difference between Cygwin and MinGW

As a simplification, it's like this:

Compile something in Cygwin and you are compiling it for Cygwin.
Compile something in MinGW and you are compiling it for Windows.

About Cygwin

Cygwin is a compatibility layer that makes it easy to port simple Unix-based applications to Windows, by emulating many of the basic interfaces that Unix-based operating systems provide, such as pipes, Unix-style file and directory access, and so on as documented by the POSIX standards. If you have existing source code that uses these interfaces, you may be able to compile it for use with Cygwin after making very few or even no changes, greatly simplifying the process of porting simple IO based Unix code for use on Windows.

When you distribute your software, the recipient will need to run it along with the Cygwin run-time environment (provided by the file cygwin1.dll). You may distribute this with your software, but your software will have to comply with its open source license. Even just linking your software with it, but distributing the dll separately, can still impose license restrictions on your code.

About MinGW

MinGW aims to simply be a port of GNU's development tools for Windows. It does not attempt to emulate or provide comprehensive compatibility with Unix, other that to provide a version of the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU Binutils and GNU Debugger that can be used natively in Windows. It also includes header files allowing the use of Windows' native API in your code.

As a result your application needs to specifically be programmed for Windows, using the Windows API, which may mean significant alteration if it was created to rely on being run in a standard Unix environment and use Unix-specific features. By default, code compiled in MinGW's GCC will compile to a native Windows X86 target, including .exe and .dll files, though you could also cross-compile with the right settings, since you are basically using the GNU compiler tools suite.

MinGW is a free and open source alternative to using the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler and its associated linking/make tools on Windows. It may be possible in some cases to use MinGW to compile something that was intended for compiling with Microsoft Visual C++ without too many modifications.

Even though MingW includes some header files and interface code allowing your code to interact with the Windows API, as with the regular standard libraries this doesn't impose licensing restrictions on software you have created.

Other considerations

For any non-trivial software application, such as one that uses a graphical interface, multimedia or accesses devices on the system, you leave the boundary of what Cygwin can do for you and further work will be needed to make your code cross-platform. But, this task can be simplified by using cross-platform toolkits or frameworks that allow coding once and having your code compile successfully for any platform. If you use such a framework from the start, you can not only reduce your headaches when it comes time to port to another platform but you can use the same graphical widgets - windows, menus and controls - across all platforms if you're writing a GUI app, and have them appear native to the user.

For instance, the open source Qt framework is a popular and comprehensive cross-platform development framework, allowing the building of graphical applications that work across operating systems including windows. There are other such frameworks too. In addition to the large frameworks there are thousands of more specialized software libraries in existence which support multiple platforms allowing you to worry less about writing different code for different platforms.

When you are developing cross-platform software from the start, you would not normally have any reason to use Cygwin. When compiled on Windows, you would usually aim to make your code able to be compiled with either MingW or Microsoft Visual C/C++, or both. When compiling on Linux/*nix, you'd most often compile it with the GNU compilers and tools directly.

Python – Listing available com ports with Python

This is the code I use.

Successfully tested on Windows 8.1 x64, Windows 10 x64, Mac OS X 10.9.x / 10.10.x / 10.11.x and Ubuntu 14.04 / 14.10 / 15.04 / 15.10 with both Python 2 and Python 3.

import sys
import glob
import serial


def serial_ports():
    """ Lists serial port names

        :raises EnvironmentError:
            On unsupported or unknown platforms
        :returns:
            A list of the serial ports available on the system
    """
    if sys.platform.startswith('win'):
        ports = ['COM%s' % (i + 1) for i in range(256)]
    elif sys.platform.startswith('linux') or sys.platform.startswith('cygwin'):
        # this excludes your current terminal "/dev/tty"
        ports = glob.glob('/dev/tty[A-Za-z]*')
    elif sys.platform.startswith('darwin'):
        ports = glob.glob('/dev/tty.*')
    else:
        raise EnvironmentError('Unsupported platform')

    result = []
    for port in ports:
        try:
            s = serial.Serial(port)
            s.close()
            result.append(port)
        except (OSError, serial.SerialException):
            pass
    return result


if __name__ == '__main__':
    print(serial_ports())

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – the difference between Cygwin and MinGW

Python – Listing available com ports with Python

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