Question about your browser-serialport

[jguille2]

Hi David (@monteslu)

First of all, thanks for your work.

I want to do "the same" (moving to WebSerialAPI) with the plain firmata.js, and I was looking for the state of all these modules (serialport...), and then I've found your project!

It is not directly applicable in my case because firmata.js removed browser-serialport support two years ago. Also, browser-serialport has not been maintained for four years... but your browser-serialport (using WebSerialAPI) is the closest point I can use to test.
I see JohnnyFive still maintains this double support (serialport/browser-serialport) and it is fine.

I have not found any other development over browser-serialport and then, I guess it is your direct modification over the 2016 version of browser-serialport. Is it right?

My question is to know if there is other projects using browser-serialport modifications to use the latest and also to have a reference point to its maintenance. node-serialport is well manteined, and so, maybe the best thing would be to rewrite again a "browser-serialport" to be "100% compatible" with firmata.js... but it would be too hard to me.

Thanks again... I wait for your answer-opinions, and maybe I will begin using browserify with your browser-serialport and an old version of firmata.js to test.

Joan

[monteslu]

Hi Joan,

I originally got things working with a PR to Suz Hinton's repo here: https://github.com/noopkat/avrgirl-arduino/blob/master/lib/browser-serialport.js

The spec for webserial changed a bit recently, and the copy of browser-serialport i have here should be working with the latest webserial in chrome.

The old browser-serialport was based on chrome.serial and only worked in chrome packaged apps which are now unsupported.

I think the best path forward is to get the code from here into @reconbot 's https://github.com/serialport org.

The firmata.js project uses node-serialport, but it was refactored a while back into firmata-io which can take any type of serialport-like interface. https://github.com/firmata/firmata.js/tree/master/packages/firmata-io

Francis, Rick Waldron, myself and a few others usually discuss these sorts of things at JsConf, but we didn't meet this year because of COVID. It's probably passed due time for us to get this sorted, so I'll open an issue on the serialport repo.

[jguille2]

Hi Luis,
Thanks a lot for your clear and quick answer!
I had seen that firmata-io but I hadn't seen with detail and now I see I can use the latest firmata-io and change the serialport for other "transports". Thanks!

I commented my point...
I'm the developer of Snap4Arduino. We are using nwjs for our desktop (the main) version and so, firmata.js over node-serialport is fine.
We have also a web version using that old browser-serialport in a Chromium connector. That is a secondary version, because the changes that Google has made on apps and connectors didn’t make it very sustainable. Of course, we was using "chrome.serial" here... and it is still running ok.

I was watching WebSerial API with interest but I was waiting for its future to be confirmed ... but maybe it's time to go there!

So I will begin testing with browserify, firmata-io and the browser-serialport from (https://github.com/noopkat/avrgirl-arduino/blob/master/lib/browser-serialport.js) (as the reference to track and send feedback), and also I will track node-serialport news to see if we can move to a "browserified new serialport version".

Thanks again.
And Merry Christmas!

Joan