Serial Port Programming in Python

Hi Folks,

I'm trying to program a serial protocol using the ghpython script component inside grasshopper. i am relatively new to python scripting in the context of grasshopper, so i have a few questions. but first allow me to explain what i'm trying to do: i have a serial device i want to talk to, but i have to do it using some sort of handshaking. for instance, when i send a command/data, i need to wait for an appropriate response before sending another. i have used andy payne's general serial components from firefly, but i don't think they'll work for what i want to do, and in general, i want to know how to do this from scratch. i'm using the pyserial library to do the comm, and i can get it to work within one script. here's an example of a working (mostly) port open/close script (x=input param for baud, y=input param for port name, z=boolean input param for open/close):

import serial

myPort=serial.Serial()
myPort.baudrate = x
myPort.port = y

if z == True:
    try:
        myPort.open()
    except:
        print "Something went wrong. Cannot open port."
    if myPort.isOpen() == True:
        print myPort.name + " is open"
        
if z != True:
    try:
        myPort.close()
    except:
        print "Something went wrong. Cannot close port."
    if myPort.isOpen != True:
        print myPort.name + " is closed"
       

this all works well and good. here are my questions:

1) I can open the port and then close it. however, if i try to re-open it, i get an access denied error. it seems rhino is holding the port open, as i have to re-start rhino to get it working again. i read through the discussions and didn't see any definitive answers to this problem. any advice?

2) I'd like to share this port with other components (or at least break up the functions of opening/closing the port and read/write, not unlike how the firefly components are organized), but i have no idea how to share an object instance between components. i did see that there is a sticky dict and tried to add myPort to it, but i kept getting errors in the other component when i try to use the object's methods. for instance:

Component 1 Script:

import serial

import scriptcontext

myPort=serial.Serial("COM4", 9600)

scriptcontext.sticky['myPort']=myPort

Component 2 Script:

import serial

import scriptcontext

myPort=scriptcontext.sticky['myPort']

print myPort.read()

but i get messages like:

Runtime error (MissingMemberException): 'Serial' object has no attribute '_port_handle'

any assistance would be greatly appreciated!!

best,

~BB~