Free Serial Terminal Windows 7 64 Bit |VERIFIED|
The download has been tested by an editor here on a PC and a list of features has been compiled; see below. We've also created some screenshots of CoolTerm to illustrate the user interface and show the overall usage and features of this serial port terminal program.
Free Serial Terminal Windows 7 64 Bit
CoolTerm was developed as a useful and user-friendly software and acts as a serial port terminal application.CoolTerm is a tool that's geared towards hobbyists and professionals with a need to exchange data with hardware connected to serial ports such as servo controllers, robotic kits, GPS receivers, microcontrollers etc.
Features of CoolTermCapability of loading and saving connection options.
Capability of manually toggling RTS and DTR signals when hardware flow control is disabled.
Capability of multiple concurrent connections if multiple serial ports are available.
Capability of recording received data to text files.
Display of received data in textual or hexadecimal format.
Hardware (CTS, DTR) and software flow control (XON).
Local echoing of received data (loop back to sender).
Local echoing of transmitted data.
Optical line status indicators.
Sending data via keypresses as well as a "Send String" dialog that support data entry in textual or hexadecimal format.
Sending data via pasting of text into the terminal window.
Sending of text files
Compatibility and LicenseCoolTerm is provided under a freeware license on Windows from network software with no restrictions on usage. Download and installation of this PC software is free and 2.0.1.1150 is the latest version last time we checked.
In case Termite is not what you are looking for, some alternatives are:The Serial Port Monitorby Eltima Software has the ability to sniff communication from another program(without requiring a special cable) and the ability to monitor multiple serialports at the same time. Serial Port Monitor handles RS485/422 as well as RS232,and supports Modbus RTU and Modbus ASCII protocols.The HyperTerminal applet that comes with Microsoft Windows, or the third-partyHyperTerminal Private Edition.MCS Electronics providesthe free "simpleterm" utility amongst its downloads. (Choose "Downloads", then"BASCOM". Then select the "MCS Simple Terminal" from the list.)YAT, two freewareserial terminals are listed on the site of LakeviewResearch: a small and simple terminal by Dieter Fauth and a full-featuredterminal by Maettu."Terminal" by Br@y++, a free terminal that supports text and hexadecimaldisplay, macros, scripting, graphic visualization and more."Termie",which started as an open-source clone of Termite, but now has some features thatTermite lacks, while lacking some of Termite's features.
COM ports. Baud rate. Flow control. Tx. Rx. These are all words that get thrown around a lot when working with electronics, especially microcontrollers. For someone who isn't familiar with these terms and the context in which they are used, they can be confusing at times. This tutorial is here to help you understand what these terms mean and how they form the larger picture that is serial communication over a terminal.
In short, serial terminal programs make working with microcontrollers that much simpler. They allow you to see data sent to and from your microcontroller, and that data can be used for a number of reasons including troubleshooting/debugging, communication testing, calibrating sensors, configuring modules, and data monitoring. Once you have learned the ins and outs of a terminal application, it can be a very powerful tool in your electronics and programming arsenal.
It is also worth noting that many terminal programs are capable of much more than just serial communication. Many have network communication capabilities such as telnet and SSH. However, this tutorial will not cover these features.
A terminal is not a command prompt, though the two are somewhat similar. In Mac OS, the command prompt is even called Terminal. Hence the confusion when using that word. Regardless, you can perform some of the same tasks in a command prompt that you could also perform within a terminal window, but it doesn't work the other way around; you cannot issue command line statements within a terminal window. We will go over how to create a serial terminal connection within a command line interface later in this tutorial. For now, just know how to distinguish between the two.
Here are some terms you should be familiar with when working within a serial terminal window. Many of these terms are covered in a lot more detail in our Serial Communication tutorial. It highly recommended that you read that page as well to get the full picture.
ASCII - Short for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange's character encoding scheme, ASCII encodes special characters from our keyboards and converts them to 7-bit binary integers that can be recognized by a number of programs and devices. ASCII charts are very helpful when working with serial terminals.
Local Echo - Local echo is a setting that can be changed in either the serial terminal or the device to which you are talking, and sometimes both. This setting simply tells the terminal to print everything you type. The benefit from this is being able to see if you are in fact typing the correct commands should you encounter errors. Be aware, though, that sometimes local echo can come back to bite you. Some devices will interpret local echo as double type. For example, if you type hello with local echo on, the receiving device might see hheelllloo, which is likely not the correct command. Most devices can handle commands with or without local echo. Just be aware that this can be an issue.
Serial Port Profile (SPP) - The Serial Port Profile is a Bluetooth profile that allows for serial communication between a Bluetooth device and a host/slave device. With this profile enabled, you can connect to a Bluetooth module through a serial terminal. This can be used for configuration purposes or for communication purposes. While not exactly pertinent to this tutorial, it's still good to know about this profile if you want to use Bluetooth in a project.
You'll notice a few Bluetooth ports on there. I have several Bluetooth devices paired with my computer, so you may have more or less devices that show up depending on what devices have been paired with your computer. (Notice the SPP portion of these names. That indicates that Bluetooth device can talk to the serial terminal as well.)
The important devices to note are the tty.usbserial and the tty.usbmodem. For this example I have both an FTDI Basic and an Arduino Uno plugged into my computer. This is just to show you the key difference between the two. As mentioned earlier, some devices are treated differently depending on how they communicate with the computer. The FT232 IC on the FDTI basic is a true serial device, and, thus, it shows up as usbserial. The Uno on the other hand, is an HID device and shows up as a usbmodem device. The HID (Human Interface Device) profile is used for keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc., and, as an HID device, the computer treats it slightly different despite the fact that is can still send serial data. In either case, these tty.usb______ ports are what we're after when connecting to a serial terminal.
If you have two FTDI boards or other similar serial devices, try hooking up both of them. Connect the TX line of one to the RX line of the other and vise versa. Then, open two serial terminal windows (yes, you can have multiple terminal windows open at once), each connected to a different device. Make sure they are both set to the same baud rate and settings. Then connect, and start typing. What you type in one terminal should show up in the opposite terminal and vise versa. You've just created a very simplistic chat client!
The Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is the software side of the Arduino platform. And, because using a terminal is such a big part of working with Arduinos and other microcontrollers, they decided to included a serial terminal with the software. Within the Arduino environment, this is called the Serial Monitor.
Those who have used HyperTerminal have either come to accept it for what it is, or sought out some other -- any other(!) -- terminal program. It's not great for serial communication, but it does work. Let's explore some of the better alternatives!
It can be weird to type stuff in the window and not see it show up in the terminal. It's undoubtedly still flowing through the serial terminal to your device, but it can be difficult to type when you don't have any visual feedback for exactly what you're typing. You can turn on local echo by going to the Setup menu and selecting Terminal.
TeraTerm is awesome for simple ASCII-only serial terminal stuff, but what if you need to send a string of binary values ranging from 0-255? For that, we like to use RealTerm. RealTerm is designed specifically for sending binary and other difficult-to-type streams of data.
The difference between the two is that a TTY device is used to call into a device/system, and the CU device (call-up) is used to call out of a device/system. Thus, this allows for two-way communication at the same time (full-duplex). This is more important to know if you are doing network communications through a terminal or other program, but it is still a question that comes up frequently. Just know that, for the purposes of this tutorial, always use the tty option for serial communication.
You can only have one connection to a particular port open at any given time (but you can have multiple terminal windows connected to different ports open at the same time). Thus, if you have an Arduino Serial Monitor window open and try to connect to that same port on a different terminal program, it will yell at you and say it could not establish a connection with that port or some such jazz. If you are ever having trouble connecting to a port, make sure it's not open somewhere else.