Hello everyone,
I re-open an old topic concerning how some USB->COM converters are mounted by Linux (and MacOS), and why it's a problem for the project I'm working in (SqueakBot, with Serge Stinckwich).
We are using a lot of USB->COM converters (actually, microcontrollers, with USB interfaces, we pilot within Squeak through the serial port) and, as noted by Jon Hylands, they are mounted under Linux as ttyUSBx (and more surprinsingly, ttyUSBModemX under MacOS), and thus not reachable from Squeak (since the Serial communication primitives just append the serial port number to "ttyS" to locate the device). The proposed solution with a virtual link is a valid workaround, but not very usable in our case (the electronic boards are meant to be use by non specialist public, including children, and I can not expect them to type any kind of "ln -s" magic).
A better workaround, for us, would to define a new Squeak primitive in SerialPlugin to open the serial port which takes the full device string ("dev/ttyUSBx") as argument (in this case, the cross-plateform compatibility will have to be ensured in the Squeak code). Do you think it would be feasible? or do you have any other idea?
Thank you! Severin