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Serial Commands
Serial commands are string templates that Amidala sends out the primary serial port (GPIO43/44) to downstream devices like the WCB. You can have up to 500 serial strings (the limit can be increased if needed).
On the Serial Commands page, click Add to create a new entry. Each entry has:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Description | A friendly name shown in button mapping dropdowns and the Droid Control page. Max 32 characters. |
| String | The actual bytes to send. Max 64 characters. |
Once saved, the command is available to assign to any button or gesture action.
Each serial command row has three optional metadata controls:
Click the star icon to mark a command as a favorite. Favorited commands appear on the Favorites tab of the Droid Control page for one-tap access during a session.
Click the eye icon to hide a command from the Sequences tab on the Droid Control page. Useful for utility commands (volume toggles, mode switches, etc.) that you trigger via button mappings but don't want cluttering the live-control view.
Hidden commands are still fully functional — they can still be assigned to buttons and sent normally. They're just not shown on the Sequences tab.
Type a category name in the text field to assign a command to a category. Suggestions from your existing categories appear as you type.
Commands in the same category are grouped together on the Sequences and Gadgets tabs of the Droid Control page.
Special case — Gadget categories: If a category name exactly matches a defined gadget's name (see Gadgets), those commands appear under that gadget on the Gadgets tab instead of the Sequences tab. This is how you tie a set of serial strings to a specific downstream device.
To remove a command from a category, clear the category field and save.
A Categories section at the bottom of the Serial Commands page lists every category you've defined, along with how many commands are in each one. Click × next to a category to delete it — this removes the category and clears the category assignment from all commands that were in it.
Empty categories (no commands assigned) are cleaned up automatically when you save.
The delimiter character (configured in General Settings) lets you encode multiple lines in a single string field.
When Amidala sends a serial string, every occurrence of the delimiter is replaced with the configured end-of-line sequence (LF, CR, or CRLF). This lets you send multi-line commands to devices that expect line breaks, without needing separate entries for each line.
Example: If your delimiter is : and EOL is LF, the string A:B:C is sent as:
A
B
C
Each segment gets its own terminator, and a final terminator is appended at the end.
The End of Line setting (General Settings) controls what's sent as the line terminator:
| Option | Bytes Sent |
|---|---|
| LF |
\n (0x0A) |
| CR |
\r (0x0D) |
| CRLF | \r\n |
Match this to whatever your receiving device expects. Most R2 accessories (WCB, Marcduino, etc.) use \r or \r\n.
| Field | Limit |
|---|---|
| Description | 32 characters |
| String | 64 characters |
| Total commands | 500 (configurable in firmware) |
| Categories | 16 |
| Commands per category | 64 |
| Favorites | 64 |
| Hidden commands | 64 |