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Serial Monitor

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Jessica Janiuk edited this page Jul 26, 2026 · 3 revisions

Serial Monitor

The Serial Monitor page shows a live log of everything Amidala is sending and receiving — the browser equivalent of a USB serial terminal, useful for debugging without needing a cable plugged in.

Sources

The toolbar has a filter button for each source. All are on by default except RX:

Button Shows
TX Outgoing serial — every string Amidala sends out, as it's transmitted.
RX Incoming serial on the physical ports (S0/S1/S2) — off by default since it can be noisy; turn it on when you need to see what's coming back.
LOG Amidala's own console output — the boot banner, config dumps (the c/d console commands), command replies, and similar. This is how you monitor boot and see the current configuration without a USB cable.
S0 Serial 0 (UART0) — the primary WCB/body-controller serial link. Also a Send destination.
S1 Serial 1 (UART1, GPIO17/18). Only shown if nothing is currently using it for a binary packet-serial protocol (RoboClaw, Sabertooth, RoboteQ serial) — see Serial Ports. Reading or sending arbitrary text on a port carrying one of those protocols could corrupt a motor command, so it's hidden whenever a dome or drive system is assigned to it.
S2 Serial 2 (UART2, GPIO21/38). Same protocol-safety rule as S1, and only shown at all once Aux Serial 2 is enabled in General settings. Also a Send destination.
WCB Mesh traffic (tagged MESH: on the wire). Only shown if WCB Client is enabled — see Connectivity. Also a Send destination.

Toggling a source button only changes what's displayed — it doesn't stop the underlying traffic or affect the firmware.

Controls

  • Pause / Resume — stops polling for new lines. When you Resume, it does not dump everything that arrived while paused; it picks back up from that moment, so you won't get a surprise flood of old traffic.
  • Clear — clears the display. It stays cleared — only genuinely new activity from this point on will reappear. This doesn't affect the device; it's just your browser's view.
  • Send — type a command and send it to whichever of S0/S1/S2/WCB are currently toggled on in the toolbar (independent of the TX/RX display filters, which only affect what's shown).

The log auto-scrolls to the latest entry as long as you're scrolled to the bottom; scroll up to read history and it stops following, without losing anything — new lines just keep accumulating for as long as this page stays open, and you can scroll back down anytime to resume auto-scroll.

Tips

  • Leave LOG on and reboot the droid (or open the page right after powering on) to watch the boot sequence and confirm your config loaded the way you expect.
  • Use the Serial Monitor to verify a newly configured serial string before assigning it to a button. Go to Droid Control, send the string manually, and confirm what appears in the monitor.
  • If a button action isn't sending what you expect, turn on RX and check the monitor for the raw round-trip to spot delimiter or EOL issues.
  • If you're troubleshooting a WCB mesh that won't connect, check LOG for a channel-mismatch warning — see Connectivity.

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