Why isn't the serial port reading incoming data?

Question

I'm attempting to read data sent by an Arduino program over the serial port. To make it simple, I've uploaded a program to the Arduino so that it just sends the value of an integer every fifth of a second, and then increments it. I know it works because I can see the output in a serial monitor and it's not really the issue at hand, but here's the code anyway:

#include <SPI.h>

int counter = 1;

void setup() {
  // Open serial communications and wait for port to open:
  Serial.begin(9600);
  while (!Serial) {
    ; // wait for serial port to connect. Needed for native USB port only
  }
}

void loop() {
  Serial.println(counter);
  counter++;
  delay(200);
}

The real problem is reading it in with Mathematica. I'm positive the port is COM8, because that's the one selected in the Arduino IDE, and if I try to open the port in Mathematica while the serial monitor in the Arduino IDE is open, it won't open.

Here's my Mathematica code:

ReadSerialPort[] := Module[{serial, dat},
  serial = DeviceOpen["Serial", {"COM8", "BaudRate" -> 9600}];
  (*dat=DeviceReadBuffer[serial,10];*)
  dat = DeviceRead[serial];
  DeviceClose[serial];
  Print@dat;
  ]

As you can see, I tried both DeviceRead and DeviceReadBuffer (separately), with the same result: $TimedOut.

I found this Wolfram community post from about two years ago, where apparently there was a bug and the solution is to add "\.\" in from of the COM... but I tried that and it gave me a "doesn't recognize escape character C" error.

What else can I try?

edit: I've also tried doing Serial.write() in the Arduino program, and doing the serial at 115200 baud, but neither fixed the problem.

Answer 1

Your code works for me, so I cannot say why it's not working for you.

However, there's built-in support for Arduino in Mathematica. You can control the entire thing from the Notebook, for your problem I'd do something like:

(*Connect to the Arduino.*)
arduino = DeviceOpen["Arduino", "COM6"]
(* Define the initialization code. *)
prependedCode = "int counter = 0;";
(* Functions for the counter. *)
incrementCounter = <|
   "ArgumentTypes" -> {},
   "ReturnType" -> {},
   "Code" -> "
        void incrementCounter() {
            counter++;
        }"|>;
getCount = <|
   "ArgumentTypes" -> {},
   "ReturnType" -> Integer,
   "Code" -> "
        int getCount() {
            return counter;
        }" |>;
(* Configure Arduino and upload the code. *)
DeviceConfigure[arduino, "Upload" -> {
    Initialization -> prependedCode,
    "Functions" -> <| "IncrementCounter" -> incrementCounter, 
      "GetCount" -> getCount  |>
    }];

Set up a scheduled task to increment the counter each 200 milliseconds:

(* Schedule a counter increment each every 200 milliseconds. *)
RunScheduledTask[DeviceExecute[arduino, "IncrementCounter"], 0.2];

And then query the Arduino for the counter whenever:

(* Get the current count. *)
DeviceExecute[arduino, "GetCount"]

And close the connection once done:

DeviceClose[arduino];

Answer 2

Close the serial monitor from the Arduino sketch. This captures the serial port and will not allow communication to the Mathematica kernel. Also, are you sure about comm8? This port number looks unusually high port number.

Depending on the versions of Mathematica, use the DeviceOpen[] to verify that the Mathematica is connecting to the device. But this function is available from version 10.