neocon

neocon is a simple serial console utility that attempts to open a tty device on a system until it successfully establishes a connection. Once connected, it facilitates the transmission of terminal input and output until a read or write failure occurs on the tty. In such cases, the utility automatically disconnects and restarts the process.

neocon offers several notable advantages over other terminal programs:

• Accessing /dev/ttyACM0 with neocon does not require root privileges. Being a member of the dialout group should provide sufficient privileges.
• By specifying a delay on keyboard input (as demonstrated below), neocon enables you to paste commands directly from the clipboard.
• neocon can be launched even when /dev/ttyACM0 is unavailable. It will automatically establish a connection as soon as the device becomes ready.

The main feature of neocon is its ability to accept a list of devices and automatically select a functional one. e.g.,

$ neocon /dev/ttyUSB{0,1,2}

or (on macOS)

$ neocon /dev/tty.usbserial-*

Supported Platforms

neocon has undergone extensive testing on both GNU/Linux and macOS platforms. If you find that neocon is capable of running on other operating systems, please submit an issue to notify the maintainer.

Options

• -b baud_rate
  • Set the TTY to the specified bit rate
• -t delay_ms
  • This option throttles keyboard input to a rate of one character every delay_ms milliseconds. It can be used to prevent buffer overruns on the remote end.
• -l logfile
  • Specifies a file for logging purposes. Non-ASCII and non-printable characters are converted to hash signs (#). To append to an existing logfile, include the -a option. To add a timestamp before each line, use the -T option.
• -a
  • Append to the log file if it already exists.
• -e escape
  • Set the escape character (default: ~).
• -T
  • Add timestamps to the log file.

Usage

Exiting neocon

To exit the neocon, simply type ~. (tilde followed by a dot). The escape character (~) can be changed using the -e option.

Switching to the next device

To manually switch to the next available device, enter ~n (tilde followed by the letter n).

Known issues

• The escape character is sent to the target.