Installing SerialPort
Installation Instructions#
For most "standard" use cases (a supported Node.js on Mac, Linux, or Windows on a x64 processor), Node SerialPort will install nice and easy with:
Compilation Problems#
We use prebuild to compile and post binaries of the library for most common use cases (Linux, Mac, Windows on standard processor platforms). If you have a special case, Node SerialPort will work, but it will compile the binary during the install. Compiling with nodejs is done via node-gyp which requires Python 2.x, so please ensure you have it installed and in your path for all operating systems. Python 3.x will not work.
This assumes you have everything on your system necessary to compile ANY native module for Node.js. If you don't, then please ensure the following are true for your system before filing a "Does not install" issue.
Installation Special Cases#
Alpine Linux#
Alpine is a (very) small distro, but it uses the musl standard library instead of glibc (used by most other Linux distros) so it requires compilation. It's commonly used with Docker. A user has confirmed that Node-Serialport works with alpine-node.
Electron#
Electron is a framework for creating cross-platform desktop applications. It comes with its own version of the Node.js runtime.
If you require serialport as a dependency for an Electron project, you must compile it for the version of Electron your project's using.
When you first install serialport it will compile against the version of Node.js on your machine, not against the Node.js runtime bundled with Electron.
To recompile serialport (or any native Node.js module) for Electron, you can use electron-rebuild; more info at Electron's README.
npm install --save-dev electron-rebuild- Add
electron-rebuildto your project's package.json's install hook - Run
npm install
For an example project, check out electron-serialport.
NW.js#
NW.js is an app runtime based on Chromium and node.js.
Like Electron, NW.js also requires compilation against its own specific headers.
To instruct prebuild to build against the correct headers, place a file named .prebuildrc on your package root with the following content:
Where <target_version> is the NW.js version you are building against (for example, 0.26.6).
Illegal Instruction#
The pre-compiled binaries assume a fully capable chip. Intel's Galileo 2, for example, lacks a few instruction sets from the ia32 architecture. A few other platforms have similar issues. If you get Illegal Instruction when trying to run Node-Serialport, you'll need to ask npm to rebuild the Serialport binary.
Mac OS X#
Ensure that you have at a minimum the xCode Command Line Tools installed appropriate for your system configuration. If you recently upgraded the OS, it probably removed your installation of Command Line Tools, please verify before submitting a ticket. To compile node-serialport with Node.js 4.x+, you will need to use g++ v4.8 or higher.
Raspberry Pi Linux#
Follow the instructions for setting up a Raspberry pi for use with Johnny-Five and Raspi IO. These projects use Node Serialport under the hood.
| Revision | CPU | Arm Version |
|---|---|---|
| A, A+, B, B+ | 32-bit ARM1176JZF-S | ARMv6 |
| Compute Module | 32-bit ARM1176JZF-S | ARMv6 |
| Zero | 32-bit ARM1176JZF-S | ARMv6 |
| B2 | 32-bit ARM Cortex-A7 | ARMv7 |
| B3 | 32-bit ARM Cortex-A53 | ARMv8 |
To enable the serial port on Raspbian, you launch raspi-config, then select Interfacing Options, then Serial. You will then be asked two questions:
- Would you like a login shell to be accessible over serial?
- Would you like the serial port hardware to be enabled?
You must answer No to question 1 and Yes to question 2. If the login shell is left active, you will experience hangs and or disconnects.
DietPi also has the ability to enable the serial port in dietpi-config; however, it doens't have a way to disable the login shell that we know of.
sudo / root#
If you're going to use sudo or root to install Node-Serialport, npm will require you to use the unsafe parameters flag.
Failure to use the flag results in an error like this:
Ubuntu/Debian Linux#
The best way to install any version of Node.js is to use the NodeSource Node.js binary distributions. Older versions of Ubuntu install Node.js with the wrong version and binary name. If your Node binary is nodejs instead of node, or if your Node version is v0.10.29, then you should follow these instructions.
You'll need the package build-essential to compile serialport. If there's a binary for your platform, you won't need it. Keep rocking!
Windows#
Node-Serialport supports Windows 7, 8.1, 10, and 10 IoT. Precompiled binaries are available, but if you want to build it from source you'll need to follow the node-gyp installation instructions. Once you've got things working, you can install Node-Serialport from source with:
Node-gyp's documentation doesn't mention it, but it sometimes helps to create a C++ project in Visual Studio so that it will install any necessary components not already installed during the past two hours of setup. This will solve some instances of Failed to locate: "CL.exe".
An old issue that you may still run into. When working with multiple Serial Ports you can set the UV_THREADPOOL_SIZE environment variable to be set to 1 + the number of ports you wish to open at a time. (Defaults to 4 which supports 3 open ports).