You don't say what error you are receiving but looking at the source
(serialposix.py) implies that it accepts nearly anything on Linux, and
relies on the OS returning a success/failure if the value is allowed or
not.
1) Are you sure it matters? I've never played with an Arduino board,
but other stuff I've used that implements a "virtual serial port"
using a ttyUSB or ttyACM device (e.g. oscilloscope, various Atmel
eval boards, JTAG interfaces, etc.) didn't have actual UARTs in
them with real baud rate generators. You got the same high-speed
transfers no matter what baud rate you told the tty driver.
2) If you want a non-standard baud rate, there is a termios2 API on
Linux that allows that (assuming the low-level driver and hardwdare
support it). The last time I looked, it wasn't supported by
pyserial, but you can ask pyserial for the underlying file
descriptor and do the ioctl manually. The slightly ugly bit is
that you'll have to use struct (or maybe ctypes) to handle the
termios2 "C" structure.
The behavior of baud rate requests that can't be met exactly is
probably not very consistent. IIRC, the recommended approach is
for the low level driver to pick the closest supported baud, and
then report the actual baud rate back when you subsequently read
the termios2 structure. However, I do know of some devices that
will always report the requested baud rate even if the physical
baud rate that was selected wasn't exactly the same as the request
rate.
Here's how you set an arbitrary baud rate in C:
-------------------------arbitrary-baud.c--------------------------
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <linux/termios.h>
int ioctl(int d, int request, ...);
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
struct termios2 t;
int fd,baud;
if (argc != 3)
{
fprintf(stderr,"usage: %s <device> <baud>\n", argv[0]);
return 1;
}
fd = open(argv[1], O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY | O_NDELAY);
if (fd == -1)
{
fprintf(stderr, "error opening %s: %s", argv[1], strerror(errno));
return 2;
}
baud = atoi(argv[2]);
if (ioctl(fd, TCGETS2, &t))
{
perror("TCGETS2");
return 3;
}
t.c_cflag &= ~CBAUD;
t.c_cflag |= BOTHER;
t.c_ispeed = baud;
t.c_ospeed = baud;
if (ioctl(fd, TCSETS2, &t))
{
perror("TCSETS2");
return 4;
}
if (ioctl(fd, TCGETS2, &t))
{
perror("TCGETS2");
return 5;
}
printf("actual speed reported %d\n", t.c_ospeed);
return 0;
}
