TimeoutError: Could not automatically find serial port

maxgerhardt · July 7, 2022, 2:02pm

Things like Arduino Uno clone boards that have CH340 chips on them instead of the ATMega16U2 as USB-UART bridge should be broken too (no 1A86:7523 HWID in uno.json).

The STM32 platform should be really broken too if it uses HWIDs to identify the serial port because the generic boards like platform-ststm32/genericSTM32F103C8.json at develop · platformio/platform-ststm32 · GitHub dictate HWIDs from the LeafLabs USB DFU bootloader that surely not everyone is using with those boards. (Think e.g.: just flash via STLink and monitor via some USB UART adapter)

I also personally ran into this problem with my platform-raspberrypi implementation when wanting to treat my Raspberry Pi Pico board as an Adafruit Feather RP2040 board (needed for some testing), PlatformIO stopped being able to monitor since it had the HWID mismatch – though I guess I could correct this in my board files.

I still have the opinion that the HWIDs should be seen as a “hint” or “priority choice”, not as a hard “if your HWID is not there we refuse to do anything”.

ivankravets · July 7, 2022, 2:34pm

The goal of that refactoring was to improve situations when multiple boards are connected to the machine and PlatformIO picked the wrong port. Also, if HWID field is declared, PlatformIO will wait for the board following the default timeout. This also solves problems with boards that have a special bootloader.

How to solve the issue when a user tries to -t upload -t monitor and the board is not ready after uploading? That was the problem when we pick the wrong port (any serial port).

Does it look like a board definition problem? I prefer the declarative approach. If we receive a lot of complaints, it makes sense to revert back to the recent changes.

Do you have any ideas on how to improve this code?

github.com

platformio/platformio-core/blob/develop/platformio/device/finder.py#L84


      
                  mbed_pages = [os.path.join(item["path"], n) for n in ("mbed.htm", "mbed.html")]
                  if any(os.path.isfile(p) for p in mbed_pages):
                      return item["path"]
                  if item["name"] and any(l in item["name"].lower() for l in msdlabels):
                      return item["path"]
              return None
          
          
          def is_serial_port_ready(port, timeout=1):
              try:
                  serial.Serial(port, timeout=timeout).close()
                  return True
              except:  # pylint: disable=bare-except
                  pass
              return False
          
          
          class SerialPortFinder:
              def __init__(  # pylint: disable=too-many-arguments
                  self,
                  board_config=None,

Sasha · July 7, 2022, 5:14pm

this article is outdated - CLI

maxgerhardt · July 7, 2022, 5:44pm

No it’s not.

grafik

serge.flandre · July 7, 2022, 6:33pm

A device can have multiple HWID sorted in most to least suitable for it.
A HWID is a combination of bus type, manufacturer, and device identifier. 1 or 2 hwid could be defined in platformio.ini superseded the default HWID declared by core platformio. in this case core used default in nothing is defined. if not defined and doesn’t work , use the HWID defined in platformio.ini. if also mean that HWID can be clear by definition in platformio.ini in case of there is no HWID identified.

Sasha · July 7, 2022, 7:05pm

27 —

maxgerhardt · July 7, 2022, 7:10pm

grafik

zinen · July 8, 2022, 7:38am

Thanks for this.

I solved the issue on windows by specifying upload port as so in platformio.ini file:

upload_port = COM6

ivankravets · July 8, 2022, 10:39am

It should fall back on the generic port finding (the behavior of PIO Core <6.1). You can ignore " TimeoutError: Could not automatically find serial port for the NodeMCU 1".

ivankravets · July 8, 2022, 10:39am

What is your board? Also, nodemcu?

ivankravets · July 8, 2022, 12:29pm

I’ve just updated the port finder a little bit. It will throw errors only in the verbose mode

Please re-test with pio upgrade --dev.

zinen · July 9, 2022, 8:28pm

Yes an original Lolin nodemuc version 3 (the not breadboard friendly one) comes with a CH340 USB converter.

Sasha · July 10, 2022, 8:37pm

does not work well with ESPAsyncWebServer

maxgerhardt · July 10, 2022, 8:48pm

And what about platform = espressif32 and latetst PIO dev core? (pio upgrade --dev)

dbsdbs · July 11, 2022, 5:11am

Hello all,

With this version of PlatformIO I can’t upload nothing to my Geeetech i3 ProB with GT2560.

Core 6.1.0* ·* Home 3.4.2

The last firmware update that I made without any problems was on 24.06.2022… Yesterday I spend 6 hours trying to upload the new firmware (because I changed many hardware things), but unsuccesfully.

The interesting that In PlatformIO tab, it founds the port correctly:

Port	Description	Hardware
COM3	USB Serial Port (COM3)	USB VID:PID=0403:6001 SER=AH03OTLEA

Any advice will be appreciated !!!

maxgerhardt · July 11, 2022, 6:44am

Yeah this a FTDI FT232 Serial instead of the ATMega16u2 it is looking for.

CLI + pio upgrade --dev and uploading makes no difference?

dbsdbs · July 11, 2022, 9:36am

I made just pio upgrade… Do not know how to do CLI upgrade…

The result is this

maxgerhardt · July 11, 2022, 9:38am

I meant to open a CLI as I have linked above and execute pio upgrade --dev in it. The regular “Upgrade PlatformIO core” will “only” give you the last stable version, I want to check development core behavior. Can you check that?

If that does not work, please add

upload_port = COM4

to the platformio.ini but replace COM4 with the actual COM port where your board is connected (see Windows device manager → Ports)

dbsdbs · July 11, 2022, 10:05am

Finally it works!

THANK YOU VERY MUCH !!!

ivankravets · July 11, 2022, 11:15am

PlatformIO Core 6.1.1 is out! Release 6.1.1 · platformio/platformio-core · GitHub

Just perform the regular upgrade for PlatforIO Core.