c - Reading from a serial port after writing on it

Question

I am working on a project that has my computer communicating with an arduino board that reads the sensor output and put it on the serial port only if a "t" was received.the arduino code as shown below is working.

const int inputPin = 0;
void setup(){
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(13, OUTPUT);}

void loop(){
 if (Serial.available() > 0){
    char c=Serial.read();
   if(c=='t'){
      int value = analogRead(inputPin);
      float celsius = (5.0 * value * 100.0)/1024.0; 
      Serial.println(celsius);
    }
  }
}

My problem is in the C code when Im trying to read what arduino puts on the serial port. My C code is:

#include<string.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
#include<stdio.h>
#include<errno.h>
#include<unistd.h>
#include<fcntl.h>

int main(){     
    int STATE_OK=0;
    int STATE_WARNING=1;
    int STATE_CRITICAL=2; 
    char tempbuf[10];
    int fd=open("/dev/ttyACM0",O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY | O_NONBLOCK);
    if(fd == -1){
            printf("Unable to open /dev/ttyACM0
");
            return STATE_WARNING;
    } else {
        fcntl(fd, F_SETFL, FNDELAY);
        int w=write(fd, "t", 1);
        printf("The number of bytes written to the serial port is %d 
",w);
        fprintf(stderr, "fd = %d.
", fd);
        sleep(10);
        int n=read(fd,tempbuf,5);
        printf("%d,%s 
",n,strerror(errno));
        if(n>0){
            float temp=atof(tempbuf);
            printf("Temperature is: %f Celsius
", temp);
            if (temp>27){
                return STATE_CRITICAL;
            }else{
                printf("The temperature is %f Celsius and checked 10 seconds ago
",temp);
                return STATE_OK;
            }
        }
    }
    close(fd);
    return 0;
}

n is always=0 and i can't figure out what is the problem. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

i can't figure out what is the problem

One big problem is that the C program running on the "computer" is incomplete.

The Arduino's program does a serial port setup of at least the baud rate (and whatever else might be performed by default).
But the "computer's" C program never properly configures the serial port. The serial port will use whatever attributes (baud rate, data length, parity setting, canonical versus raw mode) previously configured, which will cause unpredictable reads and writes. (A loopback test would probably produce a false positive result.)

Use the POSIX Serial Port guide or this answer for sample code.

For canonical mode you probably need to add code like (assuming 8N1):

    rc = tcgetattr(fd, &tty);
    if (rc < 0) {
        /* handle error */
    }
    savetty = tty;    /* preserve original settings for restoration */

    spd = B9600;
    cfsetospeed(&tty, (speed_t)spd);
    cfsetispeed(&tty, (speed_t)spd);

    tty.c_cflag &= ~PARENB
    tty.c_cflag &= ~CSTOPB
    tty.c_cflag &= ~CSIZE;
    tty.c_cflag |= CS8;

    tty.c_cflag &= ~CRTSCTS;    /* no HW flow control? */
    tty.c_cflag |= CLOCAL | CREAD;

    tty.c_iflag |= IGNPAR | IGNCR;
    tty.c_iflag &= ~(IXON | IXOFF | IXANY);
    tty.c_lflag |= ICANON;
    tty.c_oflag &= ~OPOST;

    rc = tcsetattr(fd, TCSANOW, &tty);
    if (rc < 0) {
        /* handle error */
    }

You probably should delete the line

fcntl(fd, F_SETFL, FNDELAY);  

as well as the O_NONBLOCK option in the open() call.