Auto-detection of serial ports. [imported]

[cmaglie]

This is Issue 223 moved from a Google Code project.
Added by 2010-04-01T18:19:28.000Z by dmel...@gmail.com.
Please review that bug for more context and additional comments, but update this bug.

Original labels: Type-Enhancement, Priority-High, Component-IDE, OpSys-All, Milestone-Post-1.0

Original description

The IDE should automatically detect which serial port(s) correspond to an Arduino board. On Mac
OS X, this could be through the device name. On Windows, there are system calls to find out which
COM ports correspond to USB-to-serial devices.

[ffissore]

FYI, I've just pushed this feature on to branch
https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/tree/ide-1.5.x-rxtx2.2 (works on linux and mac)

All it does is looking at the list of serial ports (as listed by RXTX) and compare each of them to the list of attached USB devices
If a match is found and its VendorID + ProductID matches one of those listed on available boards, then a LABEL (and nothing more) is added to the serial port name

The net result is a menu entry that looks like "/dev/ttyACM0 (Arduino Uno)"

boards.txt required a new field: "vid_pid", a list of vid+pid for each board

Please, give it a spin and report any feedback

Some notes: not every board plays nice with it. For example, Duemilanove reports itself as a FTDI device (so I just print nothing).
Boards using 32u4 have different vid+pid when starting up (bootloader mode) but the same one when started (sketch mode). This has the bad UX effect of plugging in an Explora, having it recognized as such and after a couple of seconds having it listed as a Leonardo.

[Lauszus]

Commit 59de784 broke it at my system. Before that it showed the name of the board next to the serial port, as intended, but after the commit the name is no longer showed.
I tried it with an Leonardo and a Mega ADK.

I am running Mac OS X 10.8.5 on a Macbook Pro 13" medio 2010.

Also it does not look like third-party boards are supported. I have added the following entry into my boards.txt file: https://github.com/TKJElectronics/Balanduino/blob/57f4265af6a6ddd9761a24d9dcdcb3f50a47dbe0/Firmware/hardware/Balanduino/avr/boards.txt#L6-L7, but still it does not detect the Balanduino.
I can open up a separate issue for third-party boards if you like?

Here is my output when running system_profiler SPUSBDataType with the Balanduino and Leonardo plugged in both connected via a hub:

Lauszus-MacBook-Pro:build Lauszus$ system_profiler SPUSBDataType
USB:

    USB Hi-Speed Bus:

      Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
      Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBEHCI
      PCI Device ID: 0x0d9d 
      PCI Revision ID: 0x00a2 
      PCI Vendor ID: 0x10de 
      Bus Number: 0x26 

        Internal Memory Card Reader:

          Product ID: 0x8403
          Vendor ID: 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.)
          Version: 98,33
          Serial Number: 9833
          Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
          Manufacturer: Apple
          Location ID: 0x26100000 / 2
          Current Available (mA): 500
          Current Required (mA): 500

    USB Hi-Speed Bus:

      Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
      Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBEHCI
      PCI Device ID: 0x0d9d 
      PCI Revision ID: 0x00a2 
      PCI Vendor ID: 0x10de 
      Bus Number: 0x24 

        USB 2.0 Hub:

          Product ID: 0x0101
          Vendor ID: 0x1a40  (TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC.)
          Version: 1,11
          Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
          Location ID: 0x24100000 / 3
          Current Available (mA): 500
          Current Required (mA): 100

            FT230X Basic UART:

              Product ID: 0x6015
              Vendor ID: 0x0403  (Future Technology Devices International Limited)
              Version: 10,00
              Serial Number: DN0031EV
              Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
              Manufacturer: FTDI
              Location ID: 0x24120000 / 7
              Current Available (mA): 500
              Current Required (mA): 90

            Arduino Leonardo:

              Product ID: 0x8036
              Vendor ID: 0x2341
              Version: 1,00
              Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
              Manufacturer: Arduino LLC
              Location ID: 0x24130000 / 6
              Current Available (mA): 500
              Current Required (mA): 500

            USB Receiver:

              Product ID: 0xc521
              Vendor ID: 0x046d  (Logitech Inc.)
              Version: 57,01
              Speed: Up to 1.5 Mb/sec
              Manufacturer: Logitech
              Location ID: 0x24140000 / 5
              Current Available (mA): 500
              Current Required (mA): 98

        Built-in iSight:

          Product ID: 0x8507
          Vendor ID: 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.)
          Version: 4,35
          Serial Number: 8JA9E1A6TDCLNL00
          Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
          Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
          Location ID: 0x24600000 / 2
          Current Available (mA): 500
          Current Required (mA): 500

    USB Bus:

      Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
      Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBOHCI
      PCI Device ID: 0x0d9c 
      PCI Revision ID: 0x00a1 
      PCI Vendor ID: 0x10de 
      Bus Number: 0x06 

        BRCM2046 Hub:

          Product ID: 0x4500
          Vendor ID: 0x0a5c  (Broadcom Corp.)
          Version: 1,00
          Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
          Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
          Location ID: 0x06600000 / 4
          Current Available (mA): 500
          Current Required (mA): 0

            Bluetooth USB Host Controller:

              Product ID: 0x8213
              Vendor ID: 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.)
              Version: 2,06
              Serial Number: C8BCC8B0B471
              Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
              Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
              Location ID: 0x06610000 / 5
              Current Available (mA): 500
              Current Required (mA): 0

        IR Receiver:

          Product ID: 0x8242
          Vendor ID: 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.)
          Version: 0,16
          Speed: Up to 1.5 Mb/sec
          Manufacturer: Apple Computer, Inc.
          Location ID: 0x06500000 / 3
          Current Available (mA): 500
          Current Required (mA): 100

        Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad:

          Product ID: 0x0237
          Vendor ID: 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.)
          Version: 0,90
          Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
          Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
          Location ID: 0x06300000 / 2
          Current Available (mA): 500
          Current Required (mA): 40

    USB Bus:

      Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
      Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBOHCI
      PCI Device ID: 0x0d9c 
      PCI Revision ID: 0x00a1 
      PCI Vendor ID: 0x10de 
      Bus Number: 0x04 

[ffissore]

system_profiler parsing started as a smart move and it's ending in a dirty hack. Given your output, I would say your serial device name is /dev/tty.usbmodem2414. Instead is?
(BTW thank you so much for your heads up)

[ffissore]

Regarding 3rd party boards, it should work just fine. The only two requirements are associating the serial device name to the VID and PID of the board and have those VID/PID properly valued in boards.txt

[Lauszus]

No it is /dev/tty.usbmodem24131 for the Leonardo - I think you took the Location ID of the USB Receiver by mistake.
Notice that it also puts a 1 after the Location ID.

And the serial device name for the Balanduino is: /dev/tty.usbserial-DN0031EV. Note that if the serial number is present it will use that instead of the Location ID.

You are welcome :)

[ffissore]

Argh, I'm a bit frustrated. For the record: here are my test cases https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/tree/ide-1.5.x/app/test/processing/app/macosx
As you can see for example in output6, there is a board with location id 0x14200000 and that mac is naming the device 1421 (first 4 chars 1420 + 1)

One escape route would be adopt https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport/ approach and have a binary deal with macosx instead than parsing system_profiler output

[Lauszus]

My computer does the same. For instance the Leonardo's location id in my case is 0x24130000 it then add's a '1' after the chars that is not zeroes, so the port name ends up being: /dev/tty.usbmodem24131.

To me it looks like it uses the serial number if it is provided - for instance if the serial number is DN0031EV it ends up being: /dev/tty.usbserial-DN0031EV.

If there is no serial number provided it uses the chars in the location id that is not '0' and thens add a '1' to the end of it.

This is all guess work and I have no code to back me up.

[ffissore]

I fixed the parser to work the way you guessed: makes your leonardo be recognized and doesn't break the other tests, so it should be fine for now.

Anyway, we have started working on a native solution: we are going to ask the osx kernel about the serial devices, stealing some code from https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport/