Reading data from a unix device
Your approach seems sound, but readLine() is very particular about what constitutes a line of text. You might look at the raw stream:
cat /dev/ap | hexdump -CYou could also try read(), as seen in this fragment that reads from /dev/zero:
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("/dev/zero"));for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { System.out.print(in.read() + " ");}System.out.println();in.close();Addendum: For serial I/O, consider RXTX or similar libraries.