title: Sending ASCII Command using PySerial
body: <p>I am trying to send the followings  ASCII command:
  close1</p>
  
  <p>using PySerial, below is my attempt:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import serial
  
  #Using  pyserial Library to establish connection
  #Global Variables
  ser = 0
  
  #Initialize Serial Port
  def serial_connection():
      COMPORT = 3
      global ser
      ser = serial.Serial()
      ser.baudrate = 38400 
      ser.port = COMPORT - 1 #counter for port name starts at 0
  
  
  
  
      #check to see if port is open or closed
      if (ser.isOpen() == False):
          print ('The Port %d is Open '%COMPORT + ser.portstr)
            #timeout in seconds
          ser.timeout = 10
          ser.open()
  
      else:
          print ('The Port %d is closed' %COMPORT)
  
  
  #call the serial_connection() function
  serial_connection()
  ser.write('open1\r\n')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but as a result I am receiving the following error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Traceback (most recent call last):
        , line 31, in &lt;module&gt;
          ser.write('open1\r\n')
        , line 283, in write
          data = to_bytes(data)
        File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\serial\serialutil.py", line 76, in to_bytes
          b.append(item)  # this one handles int and str for our emulation and ints for Python 3.x
      TypeError: an integer is required
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Not sure how I would be able to resolve that. close1 is just an example of an ASCII command I want to send there is also status1 to see if my locks are open or close, etc.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance</p>