# No data plotted in Serial Plotter

**URL:** <https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231>\
**Category:** IDE 2.x\
**Created:** [August 6, 2024, 10:04pm UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231 "2024-08-06T22:04:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 10\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![blaisjeanroch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f04885/32.png) [@blaisjeanroch](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/blaisjeanroch)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2024, 10:04pm UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231/1 "2024-08-06T22:04:38Z")

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Continuing the discussion from [Adios IDE 2.0 This is goodbye forever](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/adios-ide-2-0-this-is-goodbye-forever/1031455):

Correction to this post, "the serial plotter is not working" at all, the window appears but is empty. I tried the same program on 1.8.10 and got a good serial plot ... So I have to exert some caution when saying "2.3.2 works quite well" ... this part ain't !!!

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**Author:** ![ptillisch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ad7895/32.png) [@ptillisch](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/ptillisch)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2024, 10:10pm UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231/2 "2024-08-06T22:10:37Z")

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> [@blaisjeanroch](#):
>
> I tried the same program on 1.8.10 and got a good serial plot

Please post the program in a reply here.

Unfortunately there are some differences in the data formats accepted by Arduino IDE 1.x vs. 2.x Serial Plotter. It might be that your sketch is producing a data format that is only recognized by Arduino IDE 1.x, and only needs some small adjustments to be compatible with both IDEs.

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**Author:** ![blaisjeanroch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f04885/32.png) [@blaisjeanroch](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/blaisjeanroch)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2024, 10:27pm UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231/3 "2024-08-07T22:27:34Z")

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This is what 1.8.10 plots ok:

```arduino
// Serial.print(cnt);
  Serial.print("SetPoint: ");
  Serial.print(tmp);
  Serial.print(", ");
  Serial.print("CaRoule: ");
  Serial.println(cnt);
  delay(1000);
}

```

and the plot from 1.8.10: [Imgur: The magic of the Internet](https://imgur.com/a/oOm60nr)

Plot from 2.3.2: [Imgur: The magic of the Internet](https://imgur.com/r9jlyCZ)

Even though I don't use "plotter" often, I'm still curious to learn what I'm doing wrong here.  
Thank's for your answer

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ptillisch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ad7895/32.png) [@ptillisch](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/ptillisch)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2024, 10:59pm UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231/4 "2024-08-07T22:59:04Z")

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The problem is the spaces. Unfortunately the person who implemented the Serial Plotter made the decision to support spaces as a separator in addition to the standard comma and tab characters. So it is essential that you to not introduce spurious spaces into the data.

Try this:

```cpp
  Serial.print("SetPoint:");
  Serial.print(tmp);
  Serial.print(",");
  Serial.print("CaRoule:");
  Serial.println(cnt);
  delay(1000);
}

```

(note that I removed all the unnecessary spaces from the strings in the `Serial.print` calls)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![blaisjeanroch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f04885/32.png) [@blaisjeanroch](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/blaisjeanroch)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2024, 11:44pm UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231/5 "2024-08-07T23:44:17Z")

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OK thanks again, this is really a minor itch ... but you must now realize that once used to do things a certain way, people tend to hate having to change for no "apparent" reasons. Anyway it is really great work you're doing.  
One last thing I would like to compliment the Arduino Team for is making other boards like the ESP32, ESP8266, and recently the Pi Pico W available in the IDE. I recently started to play with the Pi Pico W, I think it is more efficiently used with a compiled program rather than Python, which it was initially designed to work with. This is a great result having both ways. The Pi Pico is really fun to use and understand, no fuss !

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**Author:** ![ptillisch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ad7895/32.png) [@ptillisch](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/ptillisch)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2024, 12:02am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231/6 "2024-08-08T00:02:19Z")

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> [@blaisjeanroch](#):
>
> thanks again

You are welcome.

> [@blaisjeanroch](#):
>
> this is really a minor itch ... but you must now realize that once used to do things a certain way, people tend to hate having to change for no "apparent" reasons. Anyway it is really great work you're doing.

I completely understand. I have also been quite frustrated by the lack of alignment in the behavior between the two versions of Serial Plotter, and the lack of documentation of the differences. The situation was actually far worse when the Arduino IDE 2.x plotter was first implemented and I had to do a tremendous amount of work to get it to the more aligned and correctly documented state it is in now, even though development and documentation of the Serial Plotter is completely outside my area of responsibility in my work for Arduino.

In the end, a lot of the blame lies with the poorly thought out and inaccurately documented implementation of the Arduino IDE 1.x Serial Plotter. This made it very difficult for the developers of the Arduino IDE 2.x Serial Plotter to emulate the obscure, inconsistent, and implementation-specific behavior of the Arduino IDE 1.x plotter.

The Arduino IDE 1.x plotter was contributed by a volunteer from the community, so we can't fault them much, but the Arduino IDE 1.x maintainers did not do their duty of carefully vetting the quality and design of the contribution. It should not have been accepted as it was submitted.

> [@blaisjeanroch](#):
>
> Anyway it is really great work you're doing.  
> One last thing I would like to compliment the Arduino Team for is making other boards like the ESP32, ESP8266, and recently the Pi Pico W available in the IDE.

Thanks for your positive words!

Regards,  
Per

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DaveX](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/user_avatar/forum.arduino.cc/davex/32/751443_2.png) [@DaveX](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/DaveX)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2024, 1:52am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231/7 "2024-08-08T01:52:16Z")

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Is the doc of the Arduino IDE 1.x serial plotter still around somewhere?

I think I used to remember features like using an initial line to name the variables instead of the `x:123 y:456\n` format

[https://docs.arduino.cc/software/ide-v2/tutorials/ide-v2-serial-plotter/](https://docs.arduino.cc/software/ide-v2/tutorials/ide-v2-serial-plotter/)

...talks of the separators:

> Further, you can also use '\t' (tab) or ' ' (space) as a delimiter instead of ',' (comma) in the above example.

But only shows naming by example.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ptillisch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ad7895/32.png) [@ptillisch](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/ptillisch)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2024, 2:06am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231/8 "2024-08-08T02:06:34Z")

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> [@DaveX](#):
>
> Is the doc of the Arduino IDE 1.x serial plotter still around somewhere?

Here it is:

[https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/blob/master/build/shared/ArduinoSerialPlotterProtocol.md](https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/blob/master/build/shared/ArduinoSerialPlotterProtocol.md)

> [@DaveX](#):
>
> I think I used to remember features like using an initial line to name the variables instead of the `x:123 y:456\n` format

Yes. Due to some significant technical differences between the implementations of the two plotters, the developer of the Arduino IDE 2.x Serial Plotter was not able to provide that feature:

> <https://github.com/arduino/arduino-serial-plotter-webapp/issues/14>
>
> \### Describe the problem
> 
> The official \[Arduino Serial Plotter protocol specif…ication\](https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/blob/master/build/shared/ArduinoSerialPlotterProtocol.md#serialplotter-protocol) documents two formats for labeling variables:
> 
> \- labeled data points (\`\<label\>:\<value\>\`)
> \- header
> 
> 🐛 Labels defined via a data set header are not recognized.
> 
> \### To reproduce
> 
> \#### Equipment
> 
> \- Arduino board
> You can also send the equivalent data directly to the web app if that is more convenient to you.
> 
> \#### Steps
> 
> 1. Upload the following sketch to your Arduino board:
> \`\`\`cpp
> void setup() {
> Serial.begin(9600);
> while (!Serial) {}
> Serial.println("label0:\\tlabel1:\\tlabel2:");
> }
> void loop() {
> for (byte value = 0; value \< 4; value++) {
> for (byte variableOffset = 0; variableOffset \< 3; variableOffset++) {
> Serial.print(value + variableOffset);
> Serial.print('\\t');
> }
> Serial.println();
> }
> delay(100);
> }
> \`\`\`
> 1. Open "\*\*Serial Plotter\*\*"
> 1. Select "\*\*9600 baud\*\*" from the dropdown baud rate menu at the bottom right corner of the "\*\*Serial Plotter\*\*" window.
> 
> 🐛 The variables are not labeled:
> 
> !\[image\](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8572152/188384414-a8505e85-d65f-429e-9547-fd2ee24b2d0c.png)
> 
> \### Expected behavior
> 
> Support for label headers.
> 
> !\[serial-plotter-label-header\](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8572152/188384460-1105633f-ccaa-4045-a2bc-bb6c2cdab350.png)
> 
> \*\*OR\*\*
> 
> \- Clear documentation of breaking change
> \- Comprehensive survey and repair of all important content broken by change
> 
> \### Version
> 
> https://github.com/arduino/arduino-serial-plotter-webapp/commit/eac6d39f3f5156390bc4f9e09cafcccc121248c9
> 
> \### Operating system
> 
> Windows
> 
> \### Operating system version
> 
> 10
> 
> \### Additional context
> 
> The demo works as expected when using the Arduino IDE 1.8.19 Serial Plotter.
> 
> \---
> 
> Examples of existing programs broken by this bug:
> 
> \- https://docs.arduino.cc/tutorials/nano-33-ble-sense/get-started-with-machine-learning / https://blog.arduino.cc/2019/10/15/get-started-with-machine-learning-on-arduino/
> \- https://docs.arduino.cc/retired/getting-started-guides/IoT%20Prime%20-%20Experiment%2002
> \- https://github.com/arduino-libraries/Arduino\_LSM9DS1/blob/master/examples/SimpleAccelerometer/SimpleAccelerometer.ino
> \- https://github.com/arduino-libraries/Arduino\_LSM9DS1/blob/master/examples/SimpleGyroscope/SimpleGyroscope.ino
> \- https://github.com/arduino-libraries/Arduino\_LSM9DS1/blob/master/examples/SimpleMagnetometer/SimpleMagnetometer.ino
> \- https://github.com/arduino-libraries/Arduino\_LSM6DS3/blob/master/examples/SimpleGyroscope/SimpleGyroscope.ino
> \- https://github.com/arduino-libraries/Arduino\_LSM6DS3/blob/master/examples/SimpleAccelerometer/SimpleAccelerometer.ino
> \- https://github.com/ArminJo/ServoEasing
> 
> \---
> 
> A label header is more efficient than printing labels redundantly for each data point.
> 
> \### Issue checklist
> 
> \- \[X\] I searched for previous reports in \[the issue tracker\](https://github.com/arduino/arduino-ide/issues?q=)
> \- \[X\] I verified the problem still occurs when using the latest \[nightly build\](https://github.com/arduino/arduino-ide#nightly-builds)
> \- \[X\] My report contains all necessary details

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DaveX](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/user_avatar/forum.arduino.cc/davex/32/751443_2.png) [@DaveX](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/DaveX)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2024, 2:33am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231/9 "2024-08-08T02:33:08Z")

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> [@ptillisch](#):
>
> > [@DaveX](#):
> >
> > Is the doc of the Arduino IDE 1.x serial plotter still around somewhere?
> 
> Here it is:
> 
> [https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/blob/master/build/shared/ArduinoSerialPlotterProtocol.md](https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/blob/master/build/shared/ArduinoSerialPlotterProtocol.md)

That is exactly it. Thanks.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/user_avatar/forum.arduino.cc/system/32/1140315_2.png) [@system](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2025, 2:33am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-data-plotted-in-serial-plotter/1289231/10 "2025-02-04T02:33:47Z")

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