bluecollarSerial

This program reads data from a serial port, parses it as JSON, and sends it to a web server running on a Unix socket.

Description

bluecollarSerial is a Go program designed to act as a bridge between a serial device and a web application. It continuously reads data from a specified serial port, expecting each line to be a JSON object. This JSON data is then forwarded to a web server via an HTTP POST request to a Unix socket.

The program is configurable via a JSON file located at ~/.config/juakaliSerial/config.json. If this file does not exist a default configuration will be created.

Configuration

The configuration file should be a JSON file with the following structure:

{
  "unix-socket": "/tmp/bluecollar.sock",
  "serial-port": "/dev/ttyUSB0",
  "baud-rate": 9600
}

• unix-socket: The path to the Unix socket the web server is listening on.
• serial-port: The path to the serial port to read from.
• baud-rate: The baud rate for the serial communication.

Serial Data Format

The program expects the serial device to send data as a stream of JSON objects, with each object on a new line. The JSON object should have the following structure:

[
  {
    "device": 0,
    "value": 123.45
  }
]

• device: An integer representing the device ID.
• value: A float representing the value read from the device.

Building and Running

To build the program, run the following command:

go build -o ~/juakaliSerial

The program will then start reading from the configured serial port and forwarding the data to the specified Unix socket.

Systemd Serivce

1. Create and edit service file:

   sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/juakaliSerial.service

2. Add the following to the file:

   [Unit]
   Description=Jua kali serial service
   After=network.target
   
   [Service]
   ExecStart=/home/{USER_NAME}/juakaliSerial
   Type=simple
   Restart=on-failure
   RestartSec=5s
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target

3. Enable and start the service:

   sudo systemctl daemon-reload
   sudo systemctl enable juakaliSerial
   sudo systemctl start juakaliSerial

4. Check if the service is running:

   sudo systemctl status juakaliSerial

Dependencies

This project uses the following Go modules:

• github.com/tarm/serial for serial communication.
• github.com/gin-gonic/gin (and its dependencies) for web server interaction, although it's only used for the http client in this case.