Best serial monitor?

Question

I just recently started using a Sparkfun serial LCD. I am able to control it through an arduino, but I want to be able to control it through a terminal on my computer. To be able to move the cursor or clear the screen, you need to be able to send hexadecimal code to it, for example, 0xFE. I am unable to find an open source terminal program for Windows that will give me this functionality. An example of a program that works very well is Eltima serial port monitor, although it is rather expensive for just a student. I have a USB to serial FTDI breakout board to get the signal to the LCD. Any suggestions as for programs, under Windows 7, will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I just write short Python programs using pySerial:

>>> import serial
>>> ser = serial.Serial(0)  # open first serial port
>>> print ser.portstr       # check which port was really used
>>> ser.write("hello")      # write a string
>>> ser.write(0xa4)         # write a byte
>>> ser.close()             # close port

Answer 2

I had the same problem with my sparkFun LCD, and found Termite by CompuPhase, and it worked fine. On linux i just used stty and echo from bash.

Answer 3

I also found this excelent option: HTerm by Der-Hammer

http://www.der-hammer.info/terminal/

Answer 4

You can use X-CTU, which is a lightweight XBee programmer that has a very good serial terminal in one of its 4 tabs. It features

• Hexadecimal view
• Text view
• CTS, CD and DSR line statuses
• DTR, RTS and Break assertions
• 1-click port opening and closing
• Text editor for sending data in packets
• Clear screen button

Answer 5

On unixy systems, "screen /dev/ttyxxx" is pretty handy. I used to use cu a lot but there's a long standing bug in turning off flow control so it's less useful for embedded systems. Then there's Kermit. In all cases, the system's terminal emulation is put to good use instead of trying to reinvent one just for serial communication.

On windos, I second putty or possibly teraterm. Putty makes a good ssh client, too, so it's handy to have around anyway.

Answer 6

Cool Term is pretty good and win/os x cross platform.

http://freeware.the-meiers.org/

Answer 7

As everyone said before: Realterm. It's my #1 serial terminal program PERIOD.

Apart from that you may get good results with several other programs/hardware combinations:

Bus Pirate has a built-in LCD mode and can interface to nearly any serial device on any serial interface. You communicate with it via terminal software or Python, C, etc

Docklight is a terminal spying program/terminal scripting program that you may like. I've only begun to look into it but it seems like it has some good features.

Answer 8

I find that RealTerm works for all of my serial port applications. I'm not sure if you are looking to programatically control the LCD or just manually send data/commands to it. RealTerm will let you send hex or ASCII values to to the serial port. It's a little buggy sometimes, but it's great for the price (free).

http://realterm.sourceforge.net/

Answer 9

take a look at bray terminal at http://hw-server.com/software/termv19b.html

i think it's the best free terminal

Answer 10

You want something like PuTTY or TeraTerm for human-readable serial i/o, or a good programming environment that makes it easy to open/access serial ports. I'm not a Python expert but MrEvil has a good point. Also the jsdb Javascript shell has an easy-to-use COM port feature:

S = new Stream('com1://115200');
S.write(0xf4);

Answer 11

My current favorite is MTTTY and can be downloaded from http://www.netburner.com/support/public_downloads.html

Answer 12

See http://www.opencircuits.com/PC-Microcontroller_Communications for a discussion of serial monitors, mostly free.