For most 'standard' use cases (a supported Node.js on Mac, Linux, or Windows on a x64 processor), Node SerialPort will install nice and easy with:
![](/uploads/1/2/7/3/127324369/438835903.jpg)
Installation Instructions
Serial ports are typically controlled by UART hardware. This is the hardware chip responsible for encoding and decoding the data sent over the serial interface. Modern serial ports typically implement the RS-232 standard, and can use a variety of different connector interfaces. The DE-9 interface is the one most commonly used connector for serial ports in modern systems.
Compilation Problems
We use prebuild to compile and post binaries of the library for most common use cases (Linux, Mac, Windows on standard processor platforms). If you have a special case, Node SerialPort will work, but it will compile the binary during the install. Compiling with nodejs is done via
node-gyp
which requires Python 2.x, so please ensure you have it installed and in your path for all operating systems. Python 3.x will not work.
This assumes you have everything on your system necessary to compile ANY native module for Node.js. If you don't, then please ensure the following are true for your system before filing a 'Does not install' issue.
Installation Special Cases
Alpine Linux
Alpine is a (very) small distro, but it uses the musl standard library instead of glibc (used by most other Linux distros) so it requires compilation. It's commonly used with Docker. A user has confirmed that Node-Serialport works with alpine-node.
Electron
Electron is a framework for creating cross-platform desktop applications. It comes with its own version of the Node.js runtime.
If you require
serialport
as a dependency for an Electron project, you must compile it for the version of Electron your project's using.
When you first install
serialport
it will compile against the version of Node.js on your machine, not against the Node.js runtime bundled with Electron.
To recompile
serialport
(or any native Node.js module) for Electron, you can use electron-rebuild
; more info at Electron's README.
npm install --save-dev electron-rebuild
- Add
electron-rebuild
to your project's package.json's install hook - Run
npm install
For an example project, check out
electron-serialport
.
NW.js
NW.js is an app runtime based on Chromium and node.js.
Like Electron, NW.js also requires compilation against its own specific headers.
To instruct
prebuild
to build against the correct headers, place a file named .prebuildrc
on your package root with the following content:
Where
<target_version>
is the NW.js version you are building against (for example, 0.26.6
).
Illegal Instruction
The pre-compiled binaries assume a fully capable chip. Intel's Galileo 2, for example, lacks a few instruction sets from the
ia32
architecture. A few other platforms have similar issues. If you get Illegal Instruction
when trying to run Node-Serialport, you'll need to ask npm to rebuild the Serialport binary.
Mac OS X
Ensure that you have at a minimum the xCode Command Line Tools installed appropriate for your system configuration. If you recently upgraded the OS, it probably removed your installation of Command Line Tools, please verify before submitting a ticket. To compile
node-serialport
with Node.js 4.x+, you will need to use g++ v4.8 or higher.
Raspberry Pi Linux
Follow the instructions for setting up a Raspberry pi for use with Johnny-Five and Raspi IO. These projects use Node Serialport under the hood.
Revision | CPU | Arm Version |
---|---|---|
A, A+, B, B+ | 32-bit ARM1176JZF-S | ARMv6 |
Compute Module | 32-bit ARM1176JZF-S | ARMv6 |
Zero | 32-bit ARM1176JZF-S | ARMv6 |
B2 | 32-bit ARM Cortex-A7 | ARMv7 |
B3 | 32-bit ARM Cortex-A53 | ARMv8 |
To enable the serial port on Raspbian, you launch
raspi-config
, then select Interfacing Options
, then Serial
. You will then be asked two questions:
- Would you like a login shell to be accessible over serial?
- Would you like the serial port hardware to be enabled?
You must answer No to question 1 and Yes to question 2. If the login shell is left active, you will experience hangs and or disconnects.
DietPi also has the ability to enable the serial port in
dietpi-config
; however, it doens't have a way to disable the login shell that we know of.
sudo / root
If you're going to use
sudo
or root to install Node-Serialport, npm
will require you to use the unsafe parameters flag.
Failure to use the flag results in an error like this:
Ubuntu/Debian Linux
The best way to install any version of Node.js is to use the NodeSource Node.js binary distributions. Older versions of Ubuntu install Node.js with the wrong version and binary name. If your Node binary is
nodejs
instead of node
, or if your Node version is v0.10.29
, then you should follow these instructions.
You'll need the package
build-essential
to compile serialport
. If there's a binary for your platform, you won't need it. Keep rocking!
Windows
Node-Serialport supports Windows 7, 8.1, 10, and 10 IoT. Precompiled binaries are available, but if you want to build it from source you'll need to follow the node-gyp installation instructions. Once you've got things working, you can install Node-Serialport from source with:
Node-gyp's documentation doesn't mention it, but it sometimes helps to create a C++ project in Visual Studio so that it will install any necessary components not already installed during the past two hours of setup. This will solve some instances of
Failed to locate: 'CL.exe'
.
An old issue that you may still run into: when working with multiple Serial Ports you can set the
UV_THREADPOOL_SIZE
environment variable to be set to 1 + the number of ports you wish to open at a time. Defaults to 4
which supports 3 open ports.
How do I check and configure serial ports under Linux for various purposes such as modem, connecting null modems or connect a dumb terminal?
Linux offers various tools. Linux uses ttySx for a serial port device name. For example, COM1 (DOS/Windows name) is ttyS0, COM2 is ttyS1 and so on.
Linux offers various tools. Linux uses ttySx for a serial port device name. For example, COM1 (DOS/Windows name) is ttyS0, COM2 is ttyS1 and so on.
Task: Display Detected System’s Serial Support
Simple run dmesg command
Output:
$ dmesg | grep tty
Output:
setserial command
setserial is a program designed to set and/or report the configuration information associated with a serial port. This information includes what I/O port and IRQ a particular serial port is using, and whether or not the break key should be interpreted as the Secure Attention Key, and so on. Just type the following command:
Output:
$ setserial -g /dev/ttyS[0123]
Output:
setserial with -g option help to find out what physical serial ports your Linux box has.
Linux serial console programs
Once serial ports identified you can configure Linux box using various utilities:
- minicom– The best friendly serial communication program for controlling modems and connecting to dump devices
- wvidial or other GUI dial up networking program – a PPP dialer with built-in intelligence.
- getty / agetty – agetty opens a tty port, prompts for a login name and invokes the /bin/login command.
- grub / lilo configuration – To configure serial port as the system console
![](/uploads/1/2/7/3/127324369/438835903.jpg)