Serial Studio

Visualize, process & export data generated by your MCU projects

Visualize and log serial data

Serial Studio is an open source software for building dashboards for microcontroller projects.

Instead of manually copying and analyzing data from a serial terminal, you can use Serial Studio to visualize your data and generate a CSV file in real-time.

You can later open the CSV file in a spreadsheet software and/or MATLAB to analyze the data generated by your project(s).

Replay your data

Need to quickly show how your project behaves to a coworker? Serial Studio is able to open past CSV files and visualize your data exactly as it happened when the CSV was generated.

As in a standard media player application, you can play/pause the recording or analyze each received frame by clicking the next/previous buttons.

Data is more than numbers

Serial Studio began as an experimental project to reduce the amount of work demanded by participating in multiple CanSat competitions at the same time. On a CanSat mission, it's complicated to see a number and quickly deduce what is happening 300 meters above you. Widgets are used to quickly understand the received telemetry.

Serial Studio allows you to display your data in realtime with the following widgets:

Accelerometer
Gyroscope
GPS/map
Bar/tank

Focus on what matters

Serial Studio allows you to visualize each data group, graph and widget in a separate window.

This can be useful if you need to make emphasis on a single sensor, or if you need to arrange and resize each window by yourself. This feature also looks great when using a multi-monitor setup.

To open a separate window, simply double click on any group, graph or widget control.

Describe what your data means, Serial Studio does the rest

You can build a dashboard with Serial Studio by creating a JSON file that:

Describes the title of your project
Sections your data into "data groups"
Each data group contains datasets, which are individual readings
Each dataset contains the following fields:
- Title (string)
- Value (string)
- Units (string, optional)
- Graph (boolean, optional)

The JSON file can be sent directly by your MCU (auto mode). Or it can be loaded from your computer, while the microcontroller only sends dataset values (manual mode).

Check the wiki for documentation and examples!

Let Serial Studio handle some of the calculations

For a resource limited MCU, sending raw data from a sensor may be the only feasible way to transmit data back to the computer.

However, the visualization and datalogging may want to post-process it. For example, you can send the raw register values from an accelerometer, and calculate the actual acceleration directly in Serial Studio.

This can be done by inputting JavaScript code in the "value" field of any dataset. In case of an execution error, the raw value shall be automatically displayed in the dashboard.

Back to basics

Serial Studio comes with an integrated console widget, which can display incoming data in plain text & hexadecimal representation.

Features:

GUI scrollback up to 12'000 lines.
Unlimited output/export buffer size, unless clear button is clicked.
Interact with your device with ASCII/Hex commands.
Line ending selection for user commands.
Export console data as a plain text file.

Work with multiple data sources

From a programming perspective, serial ports and network ports are very similar.

This allows Serial Studio to interface with network sockets, giving users the possibility of interacting across different devices & services with relative ease.

Serial Studio comes with basic VT-100 functionality, which can be helpful with simple CLI/shell interfaces.

MQTT ready

Serial Studio can also act as a simple MQTT client. This allows you to use Serial Studio to receive and display data across multiple computers anywhere in the world.

Learn more about MQTT.

A project for everyone

Serial Studio is released under the MIT license. Everyone is welcome to use, modify and improve the project.

Even if you don't know how to code, you can contribute to Serial Studio by reporting bugs, providing ideas, translating it in your native language or by spreading the word with your colleagues and friends.

GitHub repository

License