Serial Monitor - a request for some enhancements

Development Suggestions for the Arduino Project
1

A request for some enhancements to the Serial Monitor. When you unclick "Autoscroll" to examine output, I find it a bit awkward.

  • If the page-up and page-down keys could work.
  • After selecting text (left mouse hold down), if the "copy" option could appear with a right mouse click. CTRL-C does work but a two-handed operation.
  • It would be really great if I could search the output for particular text. This is for catching particular time/date/counts/strings for debugging.
2

Whilst enhancements to the Serial monitor would be nice you can always use a terminal emulator, which is what I do if I want enhanced functionality such as logging to a file

3

Using a terminal emulator, I find it's a fight for the Arduino's COM port and verify/upload/serial monitor is just no fun disconnecting/switching between two applications. TeraTerm Pro is my old favorite.
Is this the best (topic) place for asking for enhancements to the Arduino IDE? I wasn't sure.

4

I agree that the need to connect/disconnect from the COM port when using a terminal emulator is a nuisance, but when needed the functionality of a terminal emulator is very useful, as is the use of an Arduino with more than one UART or using SoftwareSerial for debug output to avoid the need to connect/disconnect the COM port

There is also the "Professional" Arduino IDE (currently (permanently ?) in alpha version) that I have not looked at so I don't know if there are any changes to the Serial monitor. See https://www.arduino.cc/pro/arduino-pro-ide

This would seem to be a good place to suggest enhancements, but from experience, don't expect a quick turnaround

5

It could be done like a Tool-plugin
By just coping the original Serial port code make the changes and then compile to jar and use as a extension in place of the original code.
I could do a experimental version, I will see if I can spare some time.

6

Would be nice if the Serial Monitor listens to page-feed characters to wipe the screen.

7

It would be nice if it did several more things, but there are more important issues with teh IDE to be addressed first and you can always use a third party terminal emulator if you want more functionality

8

The ability to open a TCP connection would be nice.

9

blnkjns:
Would be nice if the Serial Monitor listens to page-feed characters to wipe the screen.

Or even better, ANSI escape sequences, for example: Esc[2j to move the cursor "home", and Esc[2J to clear the screen. That is, if I remember correctly, it's been a long time since I used those on MS-DOS.... :wink:

10

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