v1 Opening Up a Serial Port
- Thomas Driscoll
Arduino IDE
Install the latest Arduino IDE Software
(Note: Legacy IDE 1.8.X recommended)Open the IDE and Attach your Gumband hardware device into your computer
Choose the port for your Gumband Hardware device
(Note: You don’t need the Gumband Hardware board package for Arduino Installed for this)Make sure you are choosing the port that matches your device.
Easiest way to do this is to unplug your Gumband hardware device
Look at the available device ports and take note of which are available to your computer by default.
Plug your device back in, close and open the menu and choose the new device port that appeared.
Open the Serial Monitor using the icon in the top right of the IDE
Once the monitor opens, set “Both NL & CR” option in the bottom of the monitor
(Note: Setting the baud rate here doesn’t matter)Send ‘help’ to check that you can talk to the hardware device, which if successful should send back a list of available commands!
Note: If you get a response along the lines of:
“I can't help you I am merely the bootloader, please program your board...”
your device is missing firmware, or has mismatched firmware and should be reprogrammed.
Arduino CLI
If you have the Arduino IDE 2.0 or the Arduino CLI installed, you can use this tool on the command line to communicate with your Gumband Hardware device.
Open command prompt, terminal, or bash instance
Check that the Arduino CLI is installed properly by running
arduino-cli
. You should get some response from the program with a list of available commandsTo start the serial monitor tool run
arduino-cli monitor -p COM4
, replacing COM4 with your Gumband Hardware device’s port.If the monitor successfully starts, type “help” and hit enter/return to check that you can talk to the hardware device, which if successful should send back a list of available commands!
Note: If you get a response along the lines of:
“I can't help you I am merely the bootloader, please program your board...”
your device is missing firmware, or has mismatched firmware and should be reprogrammed.
PuTTY (Windows only)
Download and install PuTTY
After opening the application, configure the following settings:
Session
Serial Line = COM4 (Or whatever port matches your Gumband Hardware device)
Speed = 9600 (Doesn’t matter but a value is needed)
Connection type → Serial
Terminal
Implicit CR in every LF → (should be checked)
Local echo → Force on
Local line editing → Force on
Connection > Serial
Data bits = 8
Stop bits = 1
Parity → None
Flow control → XON/XOFF
Once configured, click “Open” to start the session
Type
help
then press Ctrl + J to append a linefeed character. Hit enter/return to send the command. If successful the device should send back a list of available commands!
Note: If you get a response along the lines of:
“I can't help you I am merely the bootloader, please program your board...”
your device is missing firmware, or has mismatched firmware and should be reprogrammed.