Communicating with Arduino over UART in Raspberry Pi - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Communicating with Arduino over UART

📖 Scenario: You have a Raspberry Pi connected to an Arduino using UART (serial communication). You want to send a command from the Raspberry Pi to the Arduino and receive a response back.This project will guide you through writing a simple Python program on the Raspberry Pi to communicate with the Arduino over UART.

🎯 Goal: Build a Python program that sends a command string to the Arduino over UART and reads the response from the Arduino.

📋 What You'll Learn

Use the serial library to open UART communication

Send a command string 'STATUS\n' to the Arduino

Read the response string from the Arduino

Print the response to the console

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

UART communication is common for connecting microcontrollers like Arduino to Raspberry Pi for sensor data, control commands, or debugging.

💼 Career

Understanding serial communication is important for embedded systems, IoT development, and hardware interfacing roles.

1

Setup UART serial connection

Import the serial module and create a serial.Serial object called uart with port '/dev/serial0', baudrate 9600, and timeout 1.

Raspberry Pi

# Import serial and create uart connection
# Your code here

Hint

Use import serial to import the library. Then create uart with serial.Serial() using the exact port and baudrate.

2

Prepare command string

Create a variable called command and set it to the string 'STATUS\n' to send to the Arduino.

Raspberry Pi

import serial

uart = serial.Serial(port='/dev/serial0', baudrate=9600, timeout=1)

# Create command string to send
# Your code here

Hint

Set command exactly to 'STATUS\n' including the newline character.

3

Send command and read response

Use uart.write() to send the command encoded as bytes. Then use uart.readline() to read the response into a variable called response.

Raspberry Pi

import serial

uart = serial.Serial(port='/dev/serial0', baudrate=9600, timeout=1)

command = 'STATUS\n'

# Send command and read response
# Your code here

Hint

Use command.encode() to convert the string to bytes before sending. Use uart.readline() to read bytes, then decode and strip whitespace.

4

Print the Arduino response

Print the response variable to the console using print().

Raspberry Pi

import serial

uart = serial.Serial(port='/dev/serial0', baudrate=9600, timeout=1)

command = 'STATUS\n'

uart.write(command.encode())
response = uart.readline().decode().strip()

# Print the response
# Your code here

Hint

Use print(response) to show the Arduino's reply.

Note: The Arduino should reply with OK for this test.