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===== USE THE SERIAL PORT IN SOFTWARE =====
By default, the serial port is configured as a console port for interacting with the Linux OS shell.  If you want to use the serial port in a software program, you must disable the OS from using this port.

===== Serial Library =====
WiringPi includes a simplified serial port handling library. It can use the on-board serial port, or any USB serial device with no special distinctions between them. You just specify the device name in the initial open function.

To use, you need to make sure your program includes the following file:

#include <wiringSerial.h>
Then the following functions are available:

int serialOpen (char *device, int baud) ;
This opens and initialises the serial device and sets the baud rate. It sets the port into “raw” mode (character at a time and no translations), and sets the read timeout to 10 seconds. The return value is the file descriptor or -1 for any error, in which case errno will be set as appropriate.

void serialClose (int fd) ;
Closes the device identified by the file descriptor given.

void  serialPutchar (int fd, unsigned char c) ;
Sends the single byte to the serial device identified by the given file descriptor.

void  serialPuts (int fd, char *s) ;
Sends the nul-terminated string to the serial device identified by the given file descriptor.

void  serialPrintf (int fd, char *message, …) ;
Emulates the system printf function to the serial device.

int   serialDataAvail (int fd) ;
Returns the number of characters available for reading, or -1 for any error condition, in which case errno will be set appropriately.

int serialGetchar (int fd) ;
Returns the next character available on the serial device. This call will block for up to 10 seconds if no data is available (when it will return -1)

void serialFlush (int fd) ;
This discards all data received, or waiting to be send down the given device.

Note: The file descriptor (fd) returned is a standard Linux file descriptor. You can use the standard read(), write(), etc. system calls on this file descriptor as required. E.g. you may wish to write a larger block of binary data where the serialPutchar() or serialPuts() function may not be the most appropriate function to use, in which case, you can use write() to send the data.

Advanced Serial Port Control

The wiringSerial library is intended to provide simplified control – suitable for most applications, however if you need advanced control – e.g. parity control, modem control lines (via a USB adapter, there are none on the Pi’s on-board UART!) and so on, then you need to do some of this the “old fashioned” way.

For example – To set the serial line into 7 bit mode plus even parity, you need to do this…

In your program:

#include <termios.h>
and in a function:

struct termios options ;

tcgetattr (fd, &options) ;   // Read current options
  options.c_cflag &= ~CSIZE ;  // Mask out size
  options.c_cflag |= CS7 ;     // Or in 7-bits
  options.c_cflag |= PARENB ;  // Enable Parity - even by default
  tcsetattr (fd, &options) ;   // Set new options
 The ‘fd’ variable above is the file descriptor that serialOpen() returns.

Please see the man page for tcgetattr for all the options that you can set.

man tcgetattr

===== Sample Program =====

/*
 * serialTest.c:\\
 *	Very simple program to test the serial port. Expects\\
 *	the port to be looped back to itself\\
 *\\
 */\\

#include <stdio.h>\\
#include <string.h>\\
#include <errno.h>\\

#include <wiringPi.h>\\
#include <wiringSerial.h>\\

int main ()
{
  int fd ;
  int count ;
  unsigned int nextTime ;

if ((fd = serialOpen ("/dev/ttyAMA0", 115200)) < 0)
  {
    fprintf (stderr, "Unable to open serial device: %s\n", strerror (errno)) ;
    return 1 ;
  }

if (wiringPiSetup () == -1)
  {
    fprintf (stdout, "Unable to start wiringPi: %s\n", strerror (errno)) ;
    return 1 ;
  }

nextTime = millis () + 300 ;

for (count = 0 ; count < 256 ; )
  {
    if (millis () > nextTime)
    {
      printf ("\nOut: %3d: ", count) ;
      fflush (stdout) ;
      serialPutchar (fd, count) ;
      nextTime += 300 ;
      ++count ;
    }

delay (3) ;

while (serialDataAvail (fd))
    {
      printf (" -> %3d", serialGetchar (fd)) ;
      fflush (stdout) ;
    }
  }

printf ("\n") ;
  return 0 ;
}

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