Stand-alone serial terminal: DIY-VT100 or something else?

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1

I would like a stand-alone serial terminal that I can use with microcontroller projects and I came across this project: diy-VT100 - A Miniature hardware terminal | Hackaday.io
Does anyone have any better suggestions or does this seem like the right project?

If this does seem like the right project: does anyone know how to figure out what LCD screens are suitable? It's supposed to be 800x480 pixels, 5" diagonal and has an attached capacitive touch panel which will connect to the XPT2046 touch screen IC. I guess a significant part of the problem is the location of the FPC and the slot cut in the PCB since I suppose this isn't standardised. It could be hard to find a screen whose connector is in the right place to go through the provided slot in the PCB.

2

I wonder if there's a Raspberry pi project out there that does what you want. I've little experience of a pi but I guess that they might have displays that plug in directly - possibly even an off the shelf case/stand that would hold a pi and display.

Update: Looks like there are lots of options like this one:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-touch-display/

And there seems to be stands available too...

3

try a search on EBAY for raspberry pi display

when a Arduino type microcontroller USB cable is plugged into a RPi USB port a virtual serial port is created, e.g. dev/ttyUSB0, which then be communicated with using C++, Java, Python, etc

there are a number of terminal emulators for the RPi, e.g. putty

4

An old laptop that someone is throwing away, running one of the “small” Linux oses and a standard trminal emulator should work fine.

I think there are some apps for a old android phones and tablets as well.

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5

I would also be interested if a VT100 style terminal could be used to control\configure an Arduino.

Often, with some of the LoRa projects I do, you may want to change the Arduinos LoRa or program settings etc. Re-programming with the IDE is a bit of a pain and not helpful for some portable applications.

I have sort of solved the problem using Serial monitor comms and menus, with the controller either being a PC running say TeraTerm or an Android phone or tablet running a serial terminal app. This works and is useable but the output scrolls down the screen of course so you cannot really keep important info in view.

6

Have you tried any of the terminal emulations in the IDE library?

7

Nope.

But the problem I see, is what to use as the terminal and needed display.

8

Emulations isn't the right word really, but anyway.

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9

Ok, something smaller than a computer + screen?

10

Yes, exactly that.

Even a small laptop can be too big for out and about portable use.

Android phones or tablets are not perfect but are mostly visible outdoors, have high resolution screens, keyboards and can be got at fairly low cost.

Yes, I realise Bluetooth is an option, but that can cause issues if the Arduino your controlling\monitoring also uses RF modules.

11

I would say tablets are the best suited, the screen isn't too small (at least to me), and there's these keyboards that you can park the tablet in.

RF stuff isn't my area, would you say RF is interfering BT or vice versa?

12

If you trying to receive real weak LoRa signals for instance, then you dont want another RF transmitter, such as Bluetooth, a few cm from the LoRa receiver antenna.

13

So wired.. and no bluetooth keyboard. I wonder if OTG to a hub, USB kbd and Serial adapter could work. Hub probably need external power.

14

I use an OTG adapter, Arduino to Android Smartphone.

15

There was a class of portable PCs called notebooks or something like that, cute and

(googles "small pc notebook")

it looks like it's still a thing, so maybe one from when they were current.

Of course you miss out in the fun of doing it yourself…

a7

16

Asus Zenbook... very very expensive VT100 terminal :upside_down_face:

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17

Netbook I think they were called.

Usually had an atom processor. Install MS-DOS or XP and add in a terminal emulator program.

18

I don't have a netbook but I do have a 10 year old Android tablet (Hudl 2). I'm going to install the "Serial USB Terminal" app and will try to get that working via USB OTG or maybe even the audio jack.

19

That's an interesting approach, but can it do 2 way?

20

Netbooks. We had a couple of Asus X205TA "EeeBooks", and they were really nice, compared to the 6lb laptops with 2h battery life of the same era.
The things they did to fit a reasonable windows environment AND "recovery" AND space for some user files in the 32GB of flash they provided make them essentially un-upgradeable beyond the windows version they came with, though. (IIRC, they essentially use part of the "recovery" as the active OS.)

Obviously, you never bought a "real" VT100 :slight_smile:

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