diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml
index f5c6748..bfdd772 100644
--- a/.travis.yml
+++ b/.travis.yml
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ julia:
   - nightly
 notifications:
   email: false
-sudo: true
+sudo: false
 script:
     - if [[ -a .git/shallow ]]; then git fetch --unshallow; fi
     - julia -e 'Pkg.clone(pwd())'
diff --git a/REQUIRE b/REQUIRE
index acb0195..cd38c6d 100644
--- a/REQUIRE
+++ b/REQUIRE
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 julia 0.4
-Compat
+Compat 0.7.20
 Docile
 PyCall
+StringEncodings
diff --git a/src/SerialPorts.jl b/src/SerialPorts.jl
index 5e00328..b589981 100644
--- a/src/SerialPorts.jl
+++ b/src/SerialPorts.jl
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ module SerialPorts
 export SerialPort, SerialException, setDTR, list_serialports,
        check_serial_access
 
-using Compat, PyCall
+using Compat, PyCall, StringEncodings
 VERSION < v"0.4-" && using Docile
 
 const PySerial = PyCall.PyNULL()
@@ -79,8 +79,27 @@ function Base.write(serialport::SerialPort, data::@compat UInt8)
     serialport.python_ptr[:write](data)
 end
 
-function Base.write(serialport::SerialPort, data::SerialString)
-    serialport.python_ptr[:write](data)
+function Base.write(serialport::SerialPort, data::UTF8String)
+    bytes = encode(data,"UTF-8")
+    if sizeof(bytes) == length(data)
+        serialport.python_ptr[:write](bytes)
+    else
+        i = 1
+        a = Array(Int64,1)
+        while i <= sizeof(data)
+            if sizeof(string(data[i:i])) == 2
+                if bytes[i] == 195 bytes[i+1] = bytes[i+1]+64  end
+            push!(a,i+1)
+            i = i+2
+            else
+                push!(a,i)
+                i = i+1
+            end
+        end
+        a = a[2:end]
+        bytes = bytes[a]
+        serialport.python_ptr[:write](bytes)
+    end
 end
 
 function Base.read(ser::SerialPort, bytes::Integer)