SimplySerial

A bare-bones serial terminal that runs as a Windows console application.

Written by Edward Wright (fasteddy516).

Available at https://github.com/fasteddy516/SimplySerial

SimplySerial is written in C# and requires that .NET Framework 4.6.1 or newer is installed. There is a pretty good chance it is already installed on any modern Windows operating system, but if not, it can be downloaded from Microsoft at https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-framework.

Description

SimplySerial is a barebones serial terminal that runs as a Windows console application. It provides a quick way to connect to - and communicate with - serial devices through the Windows Command Prompt or PowerShell.

SimplySerial can be used directly from Command Prompt/PowerShell and should work with most devices that appear in Device Manager as "COMxx". It was, however, written specifically for use within a "terminal" window in Visual Studio Code to provide serial communications with devices running CircuitPython. Most of the testing and development of this application was done with this use case in mind.

Installation

• If it is not already installed, download and install the .NET Framework 4.6.1 Runtime.
• Download the latest release of this application.
• Open the .zip archive that you downloaded and move the ss.exe file to a location of your choosing.
• For easy access from the command prompt (if you want to be able to type ss from any directory/folder and have it open a serial terminal), you need to add the folder into which you placed ss.exe to your PATH. (For more information on adding folders to the PATH, see this HowToGeek article).

Using SimplySerial

By default, SimplySerial will attempt to connect to the first available serial (COM) port at 9600 baud, no parity, 8 data bits and 1 stop bit. If you added the ss.exe location to your PATH, only have one active COM port on your machine, and that COM port happens to be a device running CircuitPython (or anything that uses those particular port settings), entering the ss command while in Command Prompt or PowerShell should be all you have to do to connect. If you have multiple COM ports, or need to use different communications settings, you will need to use the appropriate command-line arguments listed below.

-h, --help displays a list of valid command-line arguments

-c, --com sets the desired COM port (ex. -c:1 for COM1, --com:22 for COM22)

-b, --baud sets the baud rate (ex. -b:9600, --baud:115200)

-p, --parity sets the parity option (ex. -p:none, --parity:even)

-d, --databits sets the number of data bits to use (ex. -d:8, --databits:7)

-s, --stopbits sets the number of stop bits to use (ex. -s:1, --stopbits:1.5)

-q, --quiet prevents any application messages (connection banner, error messages, etc.) from printing out to the console.

-n, --nowait prevents the system from waiting for user input ("press any key to exit", etc.)

If you wanted to connect to a device on COM17 at 115200 baud, you would use the command ss -c:17 -b:115200, or if you really enjoy typing ss --com:17 --baud:115200.

Once you're connected, you should see messages from the device on COMxx appear on screen, and anything you type into Command Prompt/PowerShell will be sent to the device.

To disconnect and exit SimplySerial, press CTRL-X at any time.

Using SimplySerial in Visual Studio Code (VSCode)

In a standard installation of VSCode, opening a "terminal" gets you a Command Prompt or PowerShell window embedded in the VSCode interface. SimplySerial works exactly the same within this embedded window as it does in a normal Command Prompt or PowerShell, which means if you fit the "easy use case scenario" mentioned above (ss.exe added to path, single COM port, 9600 baud, etc.), using SimplySerial within VSCode is as easy as opening a terminal window via the menu bar (Terminal > New Terminal) or shortcut key, typing ss and pressing enter.

If you want to make things even simpler, or if you need to use a bunch of command-line arguments and don't want to enter them every time (and you don't use the terminal window in Visual Studio Code for anything else) you can have VSCode launch SimplySerial directly whenever you open a terminal window by changing the terminal.integrated.shell.windows setting to point to ss.exe + any arguments you need to add. This works well, but will prevent you from having multiple VSCode terminal windows open, as only one application can connect to any given serial port at a given time.

Contributing

If you have questions, problems, feature requests, etc. please post them to the Issues section on Github. If you would like to contribute, please let me know. I have already put some "enhancement requests" in the Github Issues section with some ideas for improvements, most of which were either beyond my limited C#/Windows programming knowledge, or required more time than I had available!