Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
name, you will see that it is owned by
root
and access is granted to users in the
dialout
group:
$ ls -l /dev/ttyUSB0
crw-rw----T 1 root dialout 188, 0 Aug 22 19:11 /dev/ttyUSB0
You can either connect to the
/dev/ttyUSB0
device using the root account (via
su
or
sudo
), or you can add your normal user to the
dialout
group. To add your user to the
dialout group, run:
$ su -c 'usermod -a -G dialout $USER'
This will not take effect in your terminal sessions until they are restarted. Either log
out and log in again, or reboot your Linux system.
Not Using Linux to Connect to the Serial Port?
You can imagine the face the authors are making right now. It is a disap-
proving face.
ಠ
_
ಠ
However, we can give you a few tips anyway.
Windows and Mac OS X systems will need to install PL2303HXA drivers,
which you can download for
Windows XP/Vista/7
and
Mac OS X
.
According to the vendor, Windows 8 is
not
supported for this device. Maybe
if you're a Windows 8 user, this is a good time to consider dual booting to
Linux?
As far as terminal software goes, if you are using Windows XP or older, it
comes with a program called Hyperterminal that can connect to a serial
console. If you are using a newer version of Windows, you'll need to down-
you can either use screen in the same way that we've described for Linux,
Now it's time to connect to the Raspberry Pi UART serial device. You'll need to use a
client that supports a serial connection; there are lots and lots out there, but the two
common ones are minicom and screen.
Minicom
Minicom was written to look like Telix, a popular MS-DOS terminal program that was
probably written before you were born. We now feel old(er). It has that MS-DOS look
and feel to it—namely, it is old, crufty, and confusing—but it does work. To install it on
Fedora:
$ su -c 'yum install minicom -y'
