class UART – duplex serial communication bus

UART implements the standard UART/USART duplex serial communications protocol. At the physical level it consists of 2 lines: RX and TX. The unit of communication is a character (not to be confused with a string character) which can be 8 or 9 bits wide.

UART objects can be created and initialised using:

from machine import UART

uart = UART(1, 9600)                         # init with given baudrate
uart.init(9600, bits=8, parity=None, stop=1) # init with given parameters

Bits can be 5, 6, 7, 8. Parity can be None, UART.EVEN or UART.ODD. Stop can be 1 or 2.

A UART object acts like a stream object and reading and writing is done using the standard stream methods:

uart.read(10)       # read 10 characters, returns a bytes object
uart.readall()      # read all available characters
uart.readline()     # read a line
uart.readinto(buf)  # read and store into the given buffer
uart.write('abc')   # write the 3 characters

To check if there is anything to be read, use:

uart.any()               # returns the number of characters available for reading

Constructors

class machine.UART(bus, ...)

Construct a UART object on the given bus. bus can be 0 or 1. If the bus is not given, the default one will be selected (0) or the selection will be made based on the given pins.

Methods

UART.init(baudrate=9600, bits=8, parity=None, stop=1, *, pins=(TX, RX, RTS, CTS))

Initialise the UART bus with the given parameters:

  • baudrate is the clock rate.
  • bits is the number of bits per character, 7, 8 or 9.
  • parity is the parity, None, UART.EVEN or UART.ODD.
  • stop is the number of stop bits, 1 or 2.
  • pins is a 4 or 2 item list indicating the TX, RX, RTS and CTS pins (in that order). Any of the pins can be None if one wants the UART to operate with limited functionality. If the RTS pin is given the the RX pin must be given as well. The same applies to CTS. When no pins are given, then the default set of TX and RX pins is taken, and hardware flow control will be disabled. If pins=None, no pin assignment will be made.
UART.deinit()

Turn off the UART bus.

UART.any()

Return the number of characters available for reading.

UART.read([nbytes])

Read characters. If nbytes is specified then read at most that many bytes.

Return value: a bytes object containing the bytes read in. Returns None on timeout.

UART.readall()

Read as much data as possible.

Return value: a bytes object or None on timeout.

UART.readinto(buf[, nbytes])

Read bytes into the buf. If nbytes is specified then read at most that many bytes. Otherwise, read at most len(buf) bytes.

Return value: number of bytes read and stored into buf or None on timeout.

UART.readline()

Read a line, ending in a newline character.

Return value: the line read or None on timeout.

UART.write(buf)

Write the buffer of bytes to the bus.

Return value: number of bytes written or None on timeout.

UART.sendbreak()

Send a break condition on the bus. This drives the bus low for a duration of 13 bits. Return value: None.

UART.irq(trigger, priority=1, handler=None, wake=machine.IDLE)

Create a callback to be triggered when data is received on the UART.

  • trigger can only be UART.RX_ANY
  • priority level of the interrupt. Can take values in the range 1-7. Higher values represent higher priorities.
  • handler an optional function to be called when new characters arrive.
  • wake can only be machine.IDLE.

Note

The handler will be called whenever any of the following two conditions are met:

  • 8 new characters have been received.
  • At least 1 new character is waiting in the Rx buffer and the Rx line has been silent for the duration of 1 complete frame.

This means that when the handler function is called there will be between 1 to 8 characters waiting.

Returns an irq object.

Constants

UART.EVEN
UART.ODD

parity types (along with None)

UART.RX_ANY

IRQ trigger sources