Science Experiments with Arduinos Using a Multi-Function Board: Book 2 in the Saturday Afternoon Low-Cost Electronics Projects Series by Bogatin Eric

Author:Bogatin, Eric [Bogatin, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Addie Rose Press
Published: 2019-11-24T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 7.7. The humidity plotted with a time base of 2.5 min per division. The vertical scale is the humidity. I held my finger over the sensor for 1 minute and then removed it.

7.4 Datalogging data directly into a text file using a terminal emulator

So far, we looked at three ways of getting data from the Arduino:

printing directly on the Serial Monitor

plotting directly on the Serial Plotter

copying data from the Serial Monitor and pasting it into a spreadsheet

In each case, the data was sent over the serial com link to the computer. The Arduino IDE has a built-in function which reads the data on the serial com link and does something with it.

The built in Serial Monitor is an example of a general tool called a terminal emulator . This is named for the "dumb" terminals consisting of a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor and keyboard we used to use to communicate with computers in the "olden days."

When we emulate a simple terminal which just reads and writes data to and from the serial com link, we call it a terminal or terminal emulator .

The Serial Monitor is a very simple version of a terminal emulator. Once you set its baud rate to receive data to the same rate at which the Arduino is set to transmit using the Serial.begin () command, the Serial Monitor displays the characters transmitted on the serial com link.

It has a buffer to store the data as it comes in so we can scroll up and down the transmitted data.

As in most tools, there is a balance between feature richness and ease of use. In the case of the Serial Monitor, it is really easy to use, but doesn't really have many features.

However, there are other terminal emulator programs for any operating system which have more features.

Sparkfun offers a great review of terminal program options for all operating systems .

Of all the terminal emulators for windows, my favorite is Yet Another Terminal (YAT). You can Download it from this wiki page .

You will need to scroll to the bottom of this page and click on the large green "download " button. Once the .exe downloads, click on the .exe program to install it. Use all the default conditions.

Run the YAT program. When the program opens, you will see a simple screen, as shown in Figure 7.8. Before we can use it to read the data coming down the serial port, we have to adjust a few settings.

Download

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