Parallax Serial Terminal (beta) for Propeller Education Kit Labs

Andy Lindsay (Parallax)

Hello,

We have a new Parallax Serial Terminal (PST.exe) for the Propeller Education Kit labs.· It's the BASIC Stamp Editor's Debug Terminal with some additional features to make it Propeller Tool friendly.

This is a beta version, if you find any bugs or have questions, please post them here!



Parallax Serial Terminal is·bundled with the newly revised PE Kit Objects lab v1.1, which you can get from any of the links below:

Propeller Education Kit - 40 Pin DIP Version
Propeller Education Kit - PropStick USB Version
PE Kit Labs (Forum Post with all labs -·plus applications and works in progress)
Propeller Downloads

Parallax Serial Terminal Documentation is on pages 13-15 of the Objects lab PDF.
Example applications that use the Parallax Serial Terminal are on pages 15-34.· (Schematic for some of the apps is on page 2.)

Andy

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Andy Lindsay

Education Department
Parallax, Inc.

Post Edited (Andy Lindsay (Parallax)) : 5/7/2008 10:54:40 PM GMT

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Andy,

'Looks nice!

One thing I've always thought would be a nice feature for both the PBASIC debug screen, and now this, is a RESET button that would pulse DTR when clicked. As it stands, you have to check and then uncheck the DTR box to reset the target.

I do like the DISABLE button, assuming it closes the port temporarily so it can be used for uploading, etc. That's much better than changing the Com Port setting to NONE.

-Phil

tpw_man

This is awesome! I've always liked the Basic Stamp Debug screen I've been using PropTerminal, but that isn't quite enough for me because it can't auto select a COM port. This is just wonderful!
You must have a lot of Propellers to play with if you are up to COM port 51 [noparse];)[/noparse]

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I am 1011, so be surprised!


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Post Edited (tpw_man) : 5/7/2008 10:55:48 PM GMT

Andy Lindsay (Parallax)

Phil,

So noted on the Reset button, good idea.

The Disable button is really cool. Whenever you click the Propeller Tool software (or any other window), the Propeller Serial Terminal automatically disables. That way, you don't have to remember to click Disable before loading a modified program. Also, even if you're loading to EEPROM, it's okay to click the Enable button as soon as you've pressed F11 in the Propeller Tool software. The Parallax Serial Terminal will automatically wait for the port activity to stop before it reconnects.

You can disable this feature by clicking the Prefs button -> Function tab, and then uncheck the Automatically disable... checkbox. This makes it so that the display keeps going even when you click around to different windows. Just remember that in manual mode, you will have to manually click the Disable button before loading a program and the Enable button only after the program load is complete.

Andy

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Andy Lindsay

Education Department
Parallax, Inc.

Jeff Martin

This software has been updated and published on the Propeller Downloads page:

http://www.parallax.com/tabid/442/Default.aspx


Phil,

It now allows you to Ctrl+Click the DTR or RTS checkboxes to "pulse" the line instead of just "toggle" the line.

It also allows itself to be resized smaller horizontally than the previous version.

Take care,

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--Jeff Martin

· Sr. Software Engineer
· Parallax, Inc.

Cluso99

Wow, this is great.

Please, can I ask for another feature. I would like to be able to capture the text, so I would ask for another button to turn capture on and off. It can save to a text file (fixed name and location OK - yes, I know if you implement this everyone will ask for a proper file locator). Alternately, is it possible to use the propeller font (not sure how you would implement this)???

This is why I would like this feature...

I have a program that logs all the data pins on the propeller chip and sends the results in batch to the Terminal (currently Hyperterminal but I have to use a different COM port because of Hyperterminals DTR problem). I output this in a UTF16 format so that it can be read by the Propeller Tool as a *.spin file showing a timing diagram using the great propeller font (see attached file). I have published the DataLogger in the forum. It is a great use of 4 co-operating Cogs and good for debugging and seeing what is happening on the pins. The timebase can be varied from 12.5uS to 1mS and 1880 samples.

I cannot get the propellent.dll to work in Visual Basic 6, even with Hippy's and Jason Wood's wrapper. I had planned writing my own Terminal program, but why reinvent the wheel.

John Abshier

It would be nice if the Propeller Tool had a menu item to start PST.

John Abshier

LoopyByteloose

I just got a Propeller Proto Board adapted with a DB-9 serial port for a bench terminal.

This software is ideal. It doesn't get much easier.

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PLEASE CONSIDER the following:

Do you want a quickly operational black box solution or the knowledge included therein?······

···················· Tropically,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

StefanL38

hello Cluso,

there is already a software that can log the received data to files

braypp.googlepages.com/Terminal20080315.zip

logs to files has a data TX-RX-activity chart and much more

best regards

Stefan

Cluso99

Thanks Stefan,
I have downloaded and will have a look at it. Currently using PST with great success except for the capture section.

Timothy D. Swieter

Yahoo! Great addition. I was getting tired of using Hyperterminal.

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Timothy D. Swieter

www.brilldea.com·- uOLED-IOC, RGB LEDs, TLC5940 driver PCB
www.tdswieter.com

---

One little spark of imagination is all it takes for an idea to explode

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Just got a chance to try this out! Awesome!

The auto disable when the window is inactive is perfect.
(Good riddance to Hyperterm!)

OBC

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Rsadeika

I just had a chance to run the terminal program, it is a good replacement for Hyperterm. The only letdown is, that the baud rate selection only goes up to 115200. I was hoping to see some larger values in there, maybe something closer to the 1M rate, or even 2M since the Propeller can handle those speeds.

Ray

bob kruggel

I am reading "Programming and Customizing the Multicore Propeller Microcontroller", often called PCM. In Chapter 3 of PCM,there is an object called "test float32.spin". This file includes an object called "parallax serial terminal.spin". If I compile and load this, PST does not run. If I run parallax serial terminal.exe, PST runs as expected. Is this the way things are supposed to work? If so, is there any use for "parallax serial terminal.spin"?

KMyers

I always resize the Prop Tool windos and start the terminal prog beside it. Having a shortcut to it on desktop makes it easier. I dont believe PST will auto run but I could be wrong...