Data doesn't post on sitemap - Serial

Hi,
I’m very new to openhab and home automation in general.

I am trying to sent data from an Arduino to openhab through serial USB.

minicom shows that it is able to read the data sent to the serial usb port.

i have added: -Dgnu.io.rxtx.SerialPorts=/dev/ttyUSB0
to both start.sh and start_debug.sh

some lines of instructions that i put in the items and sitemap file are below:
items:
Number Arduino “Arduino [%s]” (arduino) {serial="/dev/ttyUSB0"}
sitemap:
Text item=Arduino label=“Weight”

Is there anything I did wrong?
events.log also didn’t update, hence my problem

Sorry, if I missed a simple fix.

Thank you

Hi,

The item that is storing your serial data should be a ‘String’ and not a ‘Number’.

String Arduino “Arduino [%s]” (arduino) {serial=“/dev/ttyUSB0”}

What if I want to use the same bit of data and use it in a graph, do I need to create another item or will the variable type String would still work?

Serial communication is always text/string. You would have to have a rule that converts the serial item to a number item.

I think something along this line for items

String Arduino “Arduino [%s]” (arduino) {serial=“/dev/ttyUSB0”}
Number Weigth “Weigth [%s]” (arduino)

and as rule

rule “Arduino sends to Openhab”
when
Item Arduino received update
then
var Integer Weight = new Integer(Arduino)
Weigth.sendUpdate(Weight)
end rule

Thank you very much, I will read up a little bit more on the wiki, hopefully I learn more.