pyserial - How to read the last line sent from a serial device

Question

I have an Arduino connected to my computer running a loop, sending a value over the serial port back to the computer every 100 ms.

I want to make a Python scr

Answer 1

Using .inWaiting() inside an infinite loop may be problematic. It may hog up the entire CPU depending on the implementation. Instead, I would recommend using a specific size of data to be read. So in this case the following should be done for example:

ser.read(1024)

Answer 2

Too much complications

What is the reason to split the bytes object by newline or by other array manipulations? I write the simplest method, which will solve your problem:

import serial
s = serial.Serial(31)
s.write(bytes("ATI\r\n", "utf-8"));
while True:
    last = ''
    for byte in s.read(s.inWaiting()): last += chr(byte)
    if len(last) > 0:
        # Do whatever you want with last
        print (bytes(last, "utf-8"))
        last = ''

Answer 3

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_string = ''
    while True:
        buffer_string = buffer_string + ser.read(ser.inWaiting())
        if '\n' in buffer_string:
            lines = buffer_string.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_string = lines[-1]

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

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 "readlines()" 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 4

This method allows you to separately control the timeout for gathering all the data for each line, and a different timeout for waiting on additional lines.

# get the last line from serial port
lines = serial_com()
lines[-1]              

def serial_com():
    '''Serial communications: get a response'''

    # open serial port
    try:
        serial_port = serial.Serial(com_port, baudrate=115200, timeout=1)
    except serial.SerialException as e:
        print("could not open serial port '{}': {}".format(com_port, e))

    # read response from serial port
    lines = []
    while True:
        line = serial_port.readline()
        lines.append(line.decode('utf-8').rstrip())

        # wait for new data after each line
        timeout = time.time() + 0.1
        while not serial_port.inWaiting() and timeout > time.time():
            pass
        if not serial_port.inWaiting():
            break 

    #close the serial port
    serial_port.close()   
    return lines