IDE 2.1.1 - Changing Serial Monitor Baud Rate ?

Development Tools IDE 2.x
21

I am doubtful that the origin of the problem is in the IDE. Otherwise we would see many reports of this problem. More likely it is a problem with the configuration of your computer.

I'm sure it is possible to fix it.

No. The reason is that Arduino IDE 2.x has a flexible "pluggable monitor" system. Although it is most common for Arduino boards to communicate with the computer via a virtual serial port, that is not the only possible channel (AKA "port") a board might communicate with a computer (e.g., TCP/IP, BLE, CAN bus).

Arduino wants to allow the possibility for any communication channel and protocol to be used. So (leaving aside the unfortunate naming) the Arduino IDE Serial Monitor component does not place any limitations on the communication channel used. The channel-specific implementation is provided by a separate tool called a "pluggable monitor":

https://arduino.github.io/arduino-cli/latest/pluggable-monitor-specification/

Arduino provides a pluggable monitor tool for communication over a serial port:

but boards platform developers can provide their own pluggable monitor tool for the communication channels used by the boards of that platform. For example, the popular 3rd party Teensy boards use a special "Teensy" port protocol, so the "Teensy" boards platform provides a "teensy-monitor" pluggable monitor tool, which is used under the hood by the Arduino IDE Serial Monitor when you have selected a port of the "Teensy" protocol in Arduino IDE.

Each protocol may require its own configuration settings. Baud rate is relevant for some serial ports, but not at all relevant for other protocols. For example, the "Teensy" protocol has no need for a baud configuration. For this reason the pluggable monitor system allows each pluggable monitor tool to define its own configuration parameters and supported parameter values. The configuration menus shown in the Arduino IDE Serial Monitor are based on what the pluggable monitor for the selected port's protocol tells the IDE it needs. So if you select a port of the "Teensy" protocol, you'll find there is no baud rate menu because the teensy-monitor tool does not specify that as a configuration parameter.

22

Highly doubit it, i'm using V2.1.1 and know 5 other guys who are as well, none of us have this issue.

Everything can be fixed in electronics

23

Is the replacement of a module in an electronic system a fix?

24

My comment was a quick passing comment intended to reassure @Bwanna that things are going to be ok and we'll work this out,
this is now off topic and doesn't address the O.P's Question or contribute to the O.P. in any way
Don't want to offend you
Don't want to go off topic,
OK

Respectfully i deem this to be irrelevant to the question and as such will not answer it.
Hope you understand.

25

Let me just throw this out there for whatever it's worth,

I'm running the following
HARDWARE ENVIRONMENT:
ESP32 Wroom

SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENT
IDE 2.1.1

Libraries

  • DFRobotDFPlayerMini V 1.0.6
  • EspSoftwareSerial V 8.1.0
  • FastLED V 3.6.0
  • IRremote ESP8266 V 2.8.6

I know my board works fine it's been working fine for ages,
I've been on the 2.1.1 since it was released, Had no problems related to the IDE
Been using my Serial Monitor most every day without an issue

Today i got a message to update my board platform
During updating the platform

  • The installation took like 15mins (weird that it took a while)

  • After that happened the installation failed

  • then files were rolled back

  • i was not able to see my serial monitor anymore

  • I Also did not have the ability to CHANGE MY BAUD RATE anymore
    I immediately thought of this problem and thought it might be related

I quickly took 2 screen shots as follows

2023-08-06 01_37_46-sketch_aug6a _ Arduino IDE 2.1.1
2023-08-06 01_37_46-sketch_aug6a _ Arduino IDE 2.1.1718×287 49.5 KB

2023-08-06 01_38_22-sketch_aug6a _ Arduino IDE 2.1.1
2023-08-06 01_38_22-sketch_aug6a _ Arduino IDE 2.1.1298×167 14 KB

I then clicked on the icon at the top for serial Monitor.
Strangely nothing happened (as per the problem experienced here)
i then noticed we are using the same platforms

Thus eluding to this being factual

Also at certain points trying to fix it Daemon was offline

I managed to fix the issue
here is what i did

  1. i closed my IDE

  2. Restarted the IDE (that didn't help) Still no Baud Rate Bar

  3. Shutdown the IDE again

  4. Checked that all processes were closed (they were not) so in Task manager i ended
    the processes

  5. Restarted the IDE

  6. Got the prompt again to update the platform

  7. Selected YES

  8. it completed successfully
    9 . the Baud rate was there immediately after successful installation of the update

  9. I restarted the IDE Just in case
    and then ran some programs via the serial monitor

No Drama's anymore.

QUESTION : @Bwanna
When this problem started

  1. Did you get the Daemon loader offline ?
  2. Did you get a prompt to update the platform ?
  3. If yes, did it installed correctly

@ Anyone else

is there a way to trigger this update to occur again ?

I imagine if our problems are related the following might be useful to try

  1. Since the problem seems related to an update re the board.
    i suggest going to Preferences and checking the URL
    (i know when i was installing the ESP32 i first tried 2 urls and couldn't get the board to load, I' currently using this without issue
(https://dl.espressif.com/dl/package_esp32_index.json)

i would suggest uninstalling ESP32 and the board
then re installing and using this URL

  1. As stated before
    You could uninstall the IDE and reinstall

  2. and failing that you could manually delete all registry entries (although i think it's overkill)
    i suspect you may just need to uninstall the board ESP32 and delete the link and re add it
    and then conduct all updates on the board

give that a try

26

Sorry @Bwanna @ptillisch and all, I am going to throw out here a few random thoughts, or questions, on the hope that some of them might be relevant and/or spark ideas.

Is this issue specific to a specific ESP32? For example, do you have multiple ESP32_WROOM_DA boards, and is it reproducible on multiple ones of these? Do you have other ESP32 boards that are different, like maybe an ESP32_S2 or _S3 or _C3? Doe these also exhibit the same problems?

Is there something special about how the USB is configured on your ESP32 board? I don't play enough with ESP32 boards to know if for example they can be configured to for the USB to do other things like, Keyboard or Mouse...

More long shot: adding on to previous. Possible? that the USB changes during the power up or reboot cycle. I have hit this on Teensy (USBHost stuff), Where when a plugged in device starts up, it may initially respond with one set of USB information, and then does a logical USB reset and respond with different data. Including in some cases different product and vendor IDs... Again probably a long shot. I do see subsets of this with some Arduino boards and with the HID library.

With the pluggable Monitor stuff - I spent time helping to test out some of this on the Teensy side, but not at the implementation level. So I am unclear on some (most) of the glue. Things like the role of entries in platform.txt.
Example in the Teensy one we have:

discovery.teensy.pattern="{runtime.tools.teensy-tools.path}/teensy_ports" -J2
pluggable_discovery.required=teensy:teensy-discovery
pluggable_monitor.required.teensy=teensy:teensy-monitor

Whereas the ESP32 has:

pluggable_discovery.required.0=builtin:serial-discovery
pluggable_discovery.required.1=builtin:mdns-discovery
pluggable_discovery.required.2=builtin:dfu-discovery
pluggable_monitor.required.serial=builtin:serial-monitor

Which from the surface, feels like it is using the defaults?

Again, I know probably much help, but maybe...

27

@KurtE - Thanks for the suggestion. I did a quick test using three different ESP32s. Here's what happened and I hope it helps.

  1. ESP32-WROOM-32U & ESP32-WROOM-32D
    -These caused the same outcome and showed the Baud Dropdown (DD) menu automatically
    -The DD would show whenever I had these MCUs and Started the Serial Monitor
  • The same physical USB port resulted in COM3
  1. ESP32-WROOM-32 (no subdesignation)
    -Baud DD does NOT appear
    -If a different ESP32 is used to make the DD appear and then I substitute this MCU/select proper port, the Baud DD will stay shown. If I close/reopen the Serial Monitor, the Baud DD will not be shown. (it will hold over the previous setting)
    -The same physical USB port (as above) resulted in COM9
28

Thank you for the feedback and suggestions.

-When first trying to address this, I did uninstall IDE and cleaned the Regedit files as well. Then Reinstalled the IDE.

-I'll try and switch to your ESP url for the boards and see if it changes any of the behavior

29

tried new ESP32 Board Url, no change in issues.

I've just ordered the newer -32E MCUs and will see how they behave. The standard 32s are quite old and the 32Ds are NRND.

Still can't help but think somethings not right with the lack of Baud DD on any of the ESPs.

30

I Know you did, just mentioning it again

yeah
i think its lucky that this happened to me,
it seems a problem with the board installation
so trying the URL might help
remember to completely uninstall the board first
and all boards

31

This is actually a reasonable duration for an installation or update of the ESP32 boards platform. The reason is that the installation is >2.5 GB.

The size of the platform exploded recently when they added support for the ESP32-C3, ESP32-S2, ESP32-S3 microcontrollers in addition to the original ESP32. Despite the similar names, these are actually very different architecturally and so need different toolchains.

That is because you no longer had the ESP32 boards platform installed after the failed update. This is an expected result when there is no platform installed for the selected board because Arduino IDE can't know which pluggable monitor tool it should use for the board.

The way to trigger it is to install an older version of the platform:

  1. Select Tools > Board > Boards Manager from the Arduino IDE menus to open the "Boards Manager" view in the left side panel.
  2. Scroll down through the list of boards platforms until you see the "esp32 by Espressif Systems" entry.
  3. Select a previous version from the drop-down menu in the "esp32 by Espressif Systems" entry.
  4. Click the "INSTALL" button at the bottom of the entry.
  5. Wait for the installation to finish.
  6. Select Help > Check for Arduino IDE Updates from the Arduino IDE menus.

You should now get a notification that an update is available.

I recommend against using that URL. The reason is that Espressif changed the URL some time ago. They stopped maintaining the old URL so you don't get any updates past 1.0.6 when using that URL. You should use the URL specified in Espressif's official installation instructions for the ESP32 boards platform:

https://docs.espressif.com/projects/arduino-esp32/en/latest/installing.html#installing-using-arduino-ide

32

I believe this is the relevant part of the logs. For some reason, your operating system is preventing Arduino IDE from opening the file at this path:

c:\Users\Steve\.arduinoIDE\pluggable-monitor-settings.json

The question remains: why is the operating system doing that? I am certain it could not be caused by a problem with the board, the port, or the ESP32 boards platform. This is purely about the application's ability to open a file on your hard drive.

As mentioned previously by @anon76350110, this sort of error could be caused by security software/antivirus software on your computer interfering with the access to the file. The intermittent nature of the problem you reported could be caused by a concurrency issue of Arduino IDE attempting to open the file while the security software is doing an "on access"/"real time" scan.

As an experiment, you can try :warning: TEMPORARILY :warning: disabling the security software/antivirus on your computer to see if the problem goes away:

  1. Click the X icon on the Serial Monitor tab in Arduino IDE.
  2. Disable the security software/antivirus software.
  3. Open Serial Monitor in Arduino IDE.
  4. Check to see whether the baud rate menu is present.
  5. Immediately enable the security software/antivirus software again.

If the problem doesn't occur with the security software disabled, you will need to adjust the settings of your antivirus to put the appropriate file, folder, or process on the "allow list" so it doesn't interfere with compilation.

:warning: Please be cautious about working without an antivirus. This is only about temporarily disabling it for a quick test. If you don't feel comfortable doing that, fine. You can try going straight to configuring the antivirus to not interfere with the Arduino software.

33

Ahhh, makes sense

No but the URL was still in preferences whenthis happened

Sounds like this is what he should try

If it aint broke...
i'll tell you what ill do, i've never really had a problem with this URL and it worked when
others didn't
so i'll keep using it but i'll keep your link handy

34

He should try restarting his computer in SAFE MODE then trying to open the IDE again,
or try a different computer

Lets keep the following in mind as well
on top of normal antivrus software disable windows firewall / defender as well
also a lot of people sometimes have stuff they are not aware of

he should seearch Programs and Features or add Remove Programs
whatever the case would be to see if he has unintentionally installed anti virus trials

If he doesn't feel comfortable doing that i'm happy to remote connect at some point
and do it for him

35

Yeah, that is what allowed Arduino IDE to offer to install the platform for you:

I disagree. I provided the instructions because you asked, but I am confident that the problem @Bwanna is experiencing has a completely different cause.

You happened to experience the same symptom in your IDE, but this symptom has multiple possible unrelated causes. The cause in your case was normal and expected behavior of Arduino IDE when the board's platform is not installed. I can see from the output @Bwanna shared that they do have the platform installed:

I already explained to you what the problem is with that URL. It will cause you to use a version of the ESP32 boards platform that is 2.5 years out of date.

That's your right, but please refrain from advising others to make the same mistake.

36

Fair enough, and .. Good to know

Oh, no
i didn't help with my issue, i got it sorted.
i just posted my problem as i thought it may have been the same or similar
or at least gave someone another idea to go in a helpful direction.

Fair enough.
in all honest this is good for me to know as well as even though i have been into arduino Now for about 3 years and ESP for around a year, i haven't really dug under the hood
and i do like to go under the hood, Not gonna lie
i want to have a play with the CLI , not sure how, although i'll start another thread on that if i can't figure out how

I Understand, but if it's not causing me an issue there shouldn't be a problem right ?

Refrain ?? LOL
I just ha"advise" i just basically said

  • Hey guys this just happened to me
  • Looks (on surface value) as the same thing
  • and in preferences, here is my URL that i noticed is different to your one
  • maybe you can try it and see if it works

that's all i basically said.
Now, if he tries and it works with my URL we have made progress,
and after that he can try it with the new URL

Now if it doesn't work then he can stay on the old one,
on the other hand if my URL doesn't work for him he can try your one anyway.

No one is saying your one is wrong, I'm just saying that the operating environment i have
now is working for me and i don't see a reason to alter my system just because he is having a problem.
although i will happily keep your URL in my notes and even (when i get a chance) i'll test it out, but.. i am going to test it on another computer with another board before i implement it onto my main board and main computer.
so that's all i was saying
having more URL's gives more options .
also note, the "latest" URL or driver or firmware update does not absolutely guarantee
that it works or not buggy, we all know this that's why both our options are correct,
if they were not my installation would be riddled with problems.

i won't refrain from telling others about my URL
although... in consideration of what you said

  • I will test what you said and the stability of your URL for a few months
  • if it holds up the same or better than my current one i'll advise people of both
    but steer them toward in the direction of your latest one

I think that's the more correct thing to do , i don't like to limit my options
but i can respect what you're saying ok, So since i'm still relatively new here

Please note

  • I have no problem with your comment
  • I'm not offended in the slightest
  • and it's all good

I feel i need to say this because lately people have been taking stuff too personally, LOL

So all good , ok
and also thanks for you assistance and knowledgeable input

37

Just a suggestion but when a forum mod asks you to “refrain” from something it’s best to give it some thought as they can “encourage” you a lot harder. :grinning:

38
  1. i didn't know he was a mod
  2. Mod or not, I did give it thought
  3. I found a middle ground
    I didn't ignore the advice

Now, Let's forget about helping me because we are off topic.
I Just posted my results for the benefit of the O,P. not for my benefit.
so let's get back to helping the O.P. and leave this subject of me as "Noted"

39

My British Training Manager P.J. Erret said back in 1979 that when you were playing for the satisfaction of others you were automatically satisficed!

40

Tried your suggestion and still no BAUD DD menu. I also tried again and uninstalled/reinstalled ESP32 board library using the corrected espressif url set in my Board Pref's.

Will try to run debug later and see if this file cont's to be blocked by the OS (Win 10)