Overview This Best Practice shows how to connect a serial console to the MinnowBoard development board. Connecting a serial console allows interacting with the UEFI Boot Menu without using an HDMI display or USB keyboard. It is possible to do a complete OS install using only the serial console, depending on the OS in question. A serial console can also provide valuable trouble shooting information if the HDMI display is not responding or not recognized during the boot process or OS initialization stages. NOTE: A serial port connection only works with text-based input and output and cannot support graphical user interface capabilities such as a mouse. Watch the mentalist season 1. Essentials Hardware components FTDI Serial Cable USB Adapter A ubiquitous accessory widely available in a number of versions and voltages. The FTDI serial USB adapter presents the host machine with a USB virtual serial communication port, and has wires or a connector to connect to the target board’s serial port or serial header pins.

Parallel ports and cables are becoming even more obsolete than serial cables, but, again, many computers still. Arduino Serial Monitor (Windows, Mac, Linux). IO Ninja is a scriptable terminal emulator, network sniffer, serial port monitor and an. Monitors data flowing through a generic dual COM tap-cable — such as.

Drivers for all popular OSs are available at the FTDI website, along with instructions how to download and install the driver. CAUTION: The specific voltages the MinnowBoard Turbot requires are 3v3. If you use a universal version, make sure you don’t inadvertently set it for 5v, TTL, or RS-232 levels, which will burn out the pads on the Atom processor chip. The board and all other features will remain functional, but the serial UART Tx and Rx drivers will be permanently inoperable. X1 Untitled This Best Practice shows how to connect a serial console to the MinnowBoard development board. Connecting a serial console allows interacting with the UEFI Boot Menu without using an HDMI display or USB keyboard. It is possible to do a complete OS install using only the serial console, depending on the OS in question.

A serial console can also provide valuable trouble shooting information if the HDMI display is not responding or not recognized during the boot process or OS initialization stages. NOTE: A serial port connection only works with text-based input and output and cannot support graphical user interface capabilities such as a mouse. X Software components FTDI Serial USB Driver Virtual COM port (VCP) drivers cause the USB device to appear as an additional COM port available to the PC.

Application software can access the USB device in the same way as it would access a standard COM port. FTDI Drivers • Virtual COM port (VCP) drivers are available from the for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Follow the instructions on that page to locate the proper driver for your OS.

• are also available. Tools Host-Specific Serial Port Communication Utility One of the following utilities needs to be installed, depending on your host system: Windows Various utilities exist for Windows that can access a serial USB adapter. Putty is used for examples on this website.

Familiarize yourself with the instructions provided in the. These reference the Arduino platform, but the instruction for obtaining and using putty are applicable. Mac OS X For Macs, screen is simple and expedient, already installed with your MacOS, and While referencing Arduino and logging in to Yocto, the information pertaining to identifying the USB port and starting screen are germane. Linux A number of serial communication utilities can be used. For tutorials on the MinnowBoard.org site, we use screen. On typical Linux distributions, screen is installed by default. Microsoft windows 7 free download. If it is not installed by default, use your distribution’s add software methodology to search for and install screen.

Further details on how to use screen can be found in this. While the article refers to the Arduino and Edison and logging in to Yocto, it is generic enough to apply to many serial devices.

X1 Instructions • 1 Wiring the connection Only three pins are used for this serial connection: • Pin 1 is ground • Pin 4 is Tx from the board • Pin 5 is R to the board UART Serial Header detail • 2 Configuring your host computer On a Windows host, after installing the FTDI drivers, you’ll see a new USB serial port COM port show up in Device Manager list when the FTDI cable is connected and your MinnowBoard Turbot is running: On a Linux host, you can use dmesg grep FTDI to see what COM port was assigned to the connected board. You should see something like this (indicating, in this case, /dev/ttyUSB0 was assigned): $ dmesg grep FTDI [08] USB Serial support registered for FTDI USB Serial Device [15] ftdi_sio 9-1:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected [72] usb 9-1: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0 [19] ftdi_sio: v1.6.0:USB FTDI Serial Converters Driver Terminal emulation software The terminal emulation software running on your host computer communicates with the MinnowBoard Turbot over a virtual COM port (assigned by the OS) via the FTDI serial cable. Suggested terminal emulation programs include: • For Windows: or • For Linux: screen or minicom are likely already installed as part of your Linux system, and puTTY can be installed with sudo apt-get install putty • For Mac OS X: iTerm is included in the OS distribution and free alternatives such as are also available.