pyserial: No module named tools

Question

I have installed the latest pySerial on my Ubuntu box with python 2.7.2, and it works fine for most things, but whenever I try to import the 'tools' package, it says that it can't find 'tools'. The documentation for pySerial explicitly references this 'tools' package.

>>> from serial import tools
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#30>", line 1, in <module>
    import serial.tools
ImportError: No module named tools

and when I:

>>> serial.VERSION
'2.5'

which is the latest version according to Source Forge

So why can't I get to the 'tools' package of pySerial?

score 28 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 01 '13 at 10:34

28

Use pip to install pyserial. First install pip:

sudo apt-get install python-pip

After that install pyserial:

sudo pip install pyserial

answered Jan 01 '13 at 10:34

user1881957

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7

Presumably you meant for me to `sudo pip install pyserial --upgrade` – charmoniumQ Jan 01 '13 at 17:43
Awesome, thanks! I tried everything before I saw this answer. – Mr. Polywhirl May 08 '13 at 21:30
Is there any way to do this same thing but with windows? Thanks. – Elias Benevedes Jul 30 '13 at 18:34
Thank you so much! Saved my day! – Fabian Knapp Feb 19 '14 at 23:11
On OS X, you can use `sudo easy_install pip` to install pip. From here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17271319/installing-pip-on-mac-os-x – ThomasW Feb 23 '14 at 09:11
What is the explanation for why pip install pyserial installs the tools sub-module and apt-get install python-serial doesn't? – Bill Feb 06 '18 at 04:40

score 4 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 22 '20 at 18:36

4

I got here because I had the same problem. The strange thing was that

import serial

worked, but

from serial.tools import list_ports

didn't.

Turns out stupid me named the script "serial.py". After renaming it everything worked.

edited Feb 22 '20 at 18:36

Marko Gresak

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answered Mar 13 '13 at 17:01

tfeldmann

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score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 28 '20 at 08:33

3

You have to uninstall serial and pyserial then reinstall pyserial:

pip uninstall serial
pip uninstall pyserial

pip install pyserial

Because the both libs contain a file named serial.py, you get a name conflict.

edited Jul 28 '20 at 08:33

toydarian

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answered Jul 28 '20 at 07:31

zhiyuan.liu

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1

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 01 '13 at 07:05

It looks like the ubuntu package does not quite match up with upstream. compare the official pySerial package on their SVN:

http://pyserial.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/pyserial/trunk/pyserial/serial/

to the ubuntu package in launchpad:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/raring/pyserial/raring/files/head:/serial/

Tools is missing there, too. It does look like they keep the miniterm.py script, and install it... somewhere; I'm not versed enough in deb packaging to understand where, though.

Can you give a little more detail on how I would go about uninstalling the ubuntu repo version and, in its place, installing the upstream sourceforge version? — charmoniumQ, Jan 01 '13 at 07:16

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 30 '17 at 17:57

1

The pyserial-2.4-py2.7.egg in the site-packages folder was getting imported instead of from serial in the site-packages folder. Once I renamed this file so that it no longer imported from this it worked fine. You can easily debug this by doing

import serial
serial._ _path_ _

to see where serial is getting imported from.

edited Jan 30 '17 at 17:57

Vini.g.fer

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answered Feb 11 '16 at 21:02

user5915698

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 28 '18 at 08:41

In my case, I installed serial but not pyserial after getting the following error.

ImportError: No module named 'serial'

Then import serial was ok, but from serial import tools can't work.

Just sudo pip uninstall serial and sudo pip install pyserial

Hope to help people like me.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 20 '13 at 03:06

0

yes，use python-pip install ,,,then ,,,upgrade,,,the version of serial will be 2.7 ...it workes

answered Nov 20 '13 at 03:06

chenhui

1

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 04 '14 at 15:12

Just in case that doing "pip install --upgrade" doesn't work(as happened to me), in Linux you can check if you have a serial package in /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages, the new serial packaged the one that pip install goes to /usr/**local**/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/serial, for some reason the one in usr/lib/python2.7/ has precedence and the module tools doesn't exist in that version of pyserial. Changing names or deleting the directory solve the problem.

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jun 10 '20 at 07:38

0

the difference between pip and python -m pip can be the version. for example, it may be that you call pip from python2, but when you type python -m pip then you get python3 and so on...

answered Jun 10 '20 at 07:38

alex

1

score -1 · Answer 10 · answered Jan 01 '13 at 06:57

-1

You have to call the functions of module this way:

from serials import tools

For example: If I want to call sqrt function from math module, I would do:

from math import sqrt

import math.sqrt **is wrong.**

answered Jan 01 '13 at 06:57

user1881957

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tools is not a function, it's a package, and can be imported as Sam is trying.. the package contains only modules and an empty `__init__.py`, so he'll have to import more to use anything, but it should never-the-less succeed without raising an exception, so long as the ubuntu package matches upstream (which it doesn't, see my answer) – SingleNegationElimination Jan 01 '13 at 07:07
Use pip to install pyserial. First install python pip: sudo apt-get install python-pip and then install pyserial: sudo pip pyserial – user1881957 Jan 01 '13 at 08:33

score -1 · Answer 11 · answered Oct 03 '18 at 20:50

From the pyserial webpage: https://pyserial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pyserial.html

They recommend that you use the command: python -m pip install pyserial

That worked for me. I don't know enough about pip to undersand the difference from just a regular pip install pyserial, but it worked for me (after much frustration).

pyserial: No module named tools

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