I'm helping a student get a Fingerprint Scanner - TTL (GT-511C3) ( https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11792) connected and running. Ran into a couple of new areas and would love some help.

The library for the scanner is built for Arduino (https://github.com/sparkfun/Fingerprint_Scanner-TTL). I've got it building on Bela, but had to remove the 'SoftwareSerial' object that it uses for serial communication.

Is there a similar Beaglebone object that can be easily created and configured to tx/rx to the scanner? If so I think I'd be able to slot it into the library and get it going.

    BitShapeSoft

    It's not quite as easy as Arduino to get the serial port working on the BeagleBone. If you google 'BeagleBone UART C++' you will find a few guides on how to do it. The basic idea is that you first enable the UART peripheral from the terminal, and you then open a file (usually /dev/tty01 or similar) corresponding to the serial port and use standard linux calls to write to and read from the port.

    With Bela there is the added complication that the linux calls can not be used directly from the audio thread, but must be done from an Auxiliary Task.

    Feel free to ask more specific questions if you get stuck. A better way to easily port Arduino libraries to Bela is something I want to look into in the future.