I have two (2) FTDI USB to Serial adapters each with a unique identifier. In my work with PIC microcontrollers and M.S. Windows O.S. apps I have established working code to send async. serial commands from a P.C. app to the PIC. I read on the "net" that people use an app called "moserial" specifically for communicating with embedded systems like this.
Recently I downloaded and installed "moserial" on my pioneering setup of Ubuntu MATE. I say "pioneering" because I am just beginning to do things with version 18.04 of MATE on an older ASUS laptop (K50i.) The install appears to have succeeded and I can open the "moserial" app on my desktop and look around at the various features. In may ways it is similar to the terminal emulator app I have on my Windows P.C.'s
The task I need help with is the connecting of the FTDI devices. I sometimes use the two FTDI adapters connected with a null modem and two terminal emulator apps to just test each setup by messaging back and forth between them. For instance one appears to the O.S. as COM3 and the other as COM4.
So I did the FTDI setup on MATE and used an FDTI provided test program to read the device internal data and it worked as required. I then did a lsusb with the two devices plugged in and got this good listing. See IMAGE 1 below.
I opened "moserial" and looked at all the devices listed in my /dev directory. I recall reading that it should be something like "ttyUSB0" It turns out that when both devices are plugged in the "Device" dropdown list offers /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyUSB1. See IMAGE 2 below.
I selected both devices in individual tests and got an error.
So even with either device showing up in the Port Setup menu. See IMAGE 3 below.
Do I still have to execute some command line instructions to get the hardware to be recognized by the app? Do I have to mount the devices as is typical for UNIX?
Sorry I had to get creative with the screenshots since I was allowed only one embedded graphic object.
I used to control Cisco equipment using their USB and serial2usb adapters. Shame for me, I do not remember which terminal emulator has been used for the purpose. Something good and simple with short (2 letters?) name.
The procedure:
connect usb cable to PC
tail dmesg to see which usb device came into action
chmod /dev/ to grant r/w rights to myself/everyone
The first bullet point- I have done this and a lsusb command reports the two devices as ttyUSB0 & ttyUSB1.
The Second bullet point: I haven't attempted this because without the correct command syntax I don't know how to use your suggestion.
The third bullet point: An install procedure I got from FTDI instructs me (during the driver install) to enter "chmod 0755" to make the devices available to all users even though mine is a single user system.
The third bullet point is exactly what I am posting about- I have launched the emulator and it does not connect even after selecting the ttyUSB0 or ttyUSB1 devices in the drop down menu.
I don't understand (given my present level of experience with Linux) what belonging to a dialup group means nor do I know what 666 perms is referring to. I need more information on this procedure and what the significance is.
So as it stands today I still don't have a working solution but I would like to share where this endeavor is heading.
I looked at the link provided by ugnvs on 31 Jan and in particular noticed the "putty" solution proviced in that link. In previous attempts (a few years ago) trying a Linux set up on a spare computer I recall running across the "putty" way to hook up to a terminal. These days there is a reason I am interested in moserial as I said in my first post. Others seem to use it while developing serial comms with embedded systems.
In the M.S. P.C. world we first used "Hyperterminal" and then M.S. dropped it's inclusion in the native O.S. Getting a licensed edition was pretty pricey. I searched around and as I used "Visual Studio C#" I was able to find at no charge desktop apps coded in that development space. I found a good one and use it even now.
For the embedded development I found that some implementations in the PIC microcontroller would work smoothly if a string of characters coming from the desktop app was terminated with newline, or linefeed or carriage return ASCII codes. Thus I tweaked the terminal emulator program in C# to allow me to choose which ever one I wanted before sending the string out the port.
I don't know how customizable the various terminal emulators available for MATE are. I would like to eventually be able to tweak and compile such emulator code to run on MATE. In fact if I ever expected a Linux O.S. to replace what I have with M.S. desktop apps I would have to be able to do just that.
Devices in /dev/tty* have dialout as group so you need to be part of that group in order to access them. if you look in /etc/group you will find a dialout group. Permissions 660 for /dev/ttyUSB0 shown here.
crw-rw----+ 1 user dialout 188, 0 Feb 2 12:22 ttyUSB0
I would look into Arduino IDE 1.8.19 which makes programming much easier than using cu or minicom or some other serial program.
