Timestamp option for serial monitor

I've been building some projects that are have huge time-periods and do some timekeeping stuff and i find the lack of a timestamp in the console a little lacking.

for example, i need to leave 24hrs monitoring something and i come back at the other day and i can see with date+timestamp the exact moment it occured, or if timed events are timing correctly.
Right now, there's no way to do this (without resorting to a 3rd party console with timestamp ability), i think it would make a nice addition(configurable of course)

Good idea,

You could let the Arduino - print(millis()); - as a workaround or embed a RTC e.g. DS1307 in your application

Did you have in mind that the serial monitor would keep the time stamp info and post it along with arriving serial messages, or that the arduino would send the time data along with it's serial data?

The former could be a useful configurable option, the later I think most experienced arduino user know how to do already.

Lefty

yes, there are workaround like printing millis, but it's pretty limited as it's a chore to convert a millis value to the "real" time, you need to remember at what exact time you started the monitor and yadda yadda....
embedding a rtc is unnecesary only to output a timestamp for debug/monitoring purposes or if your sketch has nothing to do with RTC functions in the first place, making it bloated in price and code and more error prone just to add the rtc output, AAAND you need to synchro the RTC clock to your workstation.....

retrolefty, i mean the first option(just like a IRC chat with timestamp option on): configurable option so monitor prints the date and time the message is received, nothing is required on the Arduino side.

the second option is cumbersome for the reasons explained above.

edit: i've submitted it officially, support it if you're interested http://code.google.com/p/arduino/issues/detail?id=482&sort=-id

Arduino IDE does not need more complexity, works well and looks clean.

Try HTerm for serial debugging and you will never use Arduino serial monitor again.

What constitutes one of your "messages" anyways? A single line? Only print the timestamp if the last character is more than 1 minute ago?

What you want is not hard to do, just hard to make right for every situation.

frank, a simple timestamp for every "line"(that's what i call a message) (data+linefeed) received, like:

[26/jan 16:45:23.456] Hello world!
[26/jan 16:45:23.486] now i'm blinking lights!

etc etc

eried, imho, arduino IDE could use to be more "complicated", having some "intermediate" options that would allow for much better usability by power users/debuggers that normal people would just ignore and keep seeing the same IDE.
i'll add HTerm to the list, right now i'm going to try Terminal first that i saw in the forum

My point was, if you want each line to be a message, what if I want every message to have a varying amount of lines? You'd have to either make it super configurable, or don't add the feature at all to keep the UI simple.

My own opinion is that Arduino should have detached themselves from the Processing.org editor ages ago. With all the time that has gone past, they could have developed an Eclipse or NetBeans plugin already. The one special thing that the Arduino IDE does is use a ton of regex to find libraries and to generate function prototypes behind your back, this could have easily been moved to a plugin for Eclipse or NetBeans. The special compilation steps can also be taken care of that way. The Arduino team would not have had to focus on stuff like the actual editor, which has already been perfected by various other groups, and then people could also have had access to autocomplete and all the other fancy features featured by the other IDEs I mentioned.

So hope for a massive overhaul or else expect them to keep the cute editor basically the way it is, or make a 2nd "pro" IDE.

Once somebody stops using Arduino, it's not likely they'd come back anyways. Every move that Arduino has taken so far has been in favor of making the device easier to use, instead of making the device more powerful, so there's no reason for them to if they've found something better.

You can just use Docklight for this purpose which came with time stamp interval configuration.
I guess adding too many feature to Arduino IDE will add more issues later.

I think the timestamp information should be hidden, but pop-up when you mouse-over the text in question - simple, uncluttered, intuitive.

FWIW, I vote for the timestamp option. A simple flag in a menu should suffice. Default: turned off.