Erlang serial IO

Question

I want to talk to my modem with erlang. It is mounted as /dev/ttyUSB and perfectly understands AT-commands.

• Can I read and write from the device with the standard file module?

• How about baudrate, bytesize, parity, RTS/CTS, DSR/DTR and the like?

• Have you any experiences with tonyg-erlang-serial-1.0? (I am not too convinced of this package as it says in the readme: "This is a port program with erlang driver for serial communication, originally written by Johan Bevemyr in 1996 and sporadically maintained by Tony Garnock-Jones from 2007 onwards."

• What is the common practice for serial I/O in erlang?

Answer 1

Get erlang-serial with rebar support from github.com/systra/erlang-serial. Here is a simple usage example:

Serial = serial:start([{speed,38400},{open,"/dev/ttya"}]),
Serial ! {send, <<"test">>},
receive
    {data,FromOtherSide} ->
        doStuff(FromOtherSide);
    Other ->
        Other
end.

Answer 2

If you are asking about writing to device files , then you cannot do it using the available file modules in erlang.

You will have to open a port and execute your c/C++ code.

Check if this helps.

Answer 3

So there is apparently no serial communication library for erlang. I now had to dig up python again, use pyserial, spawn the python threads from erlang and communicate via stdin.

If anyone knows better, please proof me wrong. I would love to have erlang native serial I/O.