Weird characters coming over serial port

Projects Programming
1

I'm working on this project with a arduino that has a moisture sensor attached. On the raspi I'm reading the serial/usb connection with python. 2 Things.

  1. sometimes, I know what digit to expect, but sometimes when starting the app and it seems the first read of the serial port, I get extra numbers.

expecting 1042\r\n

getting on first call 101042\r\n

  1. I've also noticed sometime I get this

▒95

Then python crashes.

This is basically the serial code.

serialPort = '/dev/ttyACM0'
ser = serial.Serial(serialPort, 9600, timeout=1)
sensor_data = ser.readline()
print sensor_data

Thanks in advance for any help.

2

Thanks in advance for any help.

Your problem is on line 47 of your Arduino code. Or, so my crystal ball says. Of course, it's been dropped a few times...