Serial Monitor

Serial Monitor is an essential tool for you to "talk" (communicate) with your Arduino board.

Connection & Setup

Before use, ensure you have connected the board and selected the correct Port.

1. Baud Rate

This is the most important parameter. The Baud Rate in the Serial Monitor must match the parameter in Serial.begin(baudrate) in your source code.

The default is usually 9600 or 115200.
Select the rate from the dropdown menu on the toolbar.
Data Rate: The status bar displays the real-time data transmission/reception speed (B/s or KB/s).
Reset Board: Press the Reset button on the toolbar to send a reset signal to the board (requires an active connection).

2. Line Ending

Determines whether to append line ending characters when you send a command:

No Line Ending: Sends only the raw content.
Newline (LF): Appends \n.
Carriage Return (CR): Appends \r.
Both NL & CR: Appends both \r\n (Most common).

Sending and Receiving Data

Receiving Data (Output)

Data sent from the board to the computer (Serial.print) will be displayed in the main area.
Auto-scroll: Automatically scrolls to the bottom when new data arrives. Disable this if you want to stop and read older logs.
Timestamps: Enable in Settings to see the reception time of each packet (useful for measuring latency).

Sending Data (Input)

Enter commands into the Input box at the bottom of the panel.
Press Enter or the Send button to send it to the board.
The data you send will be displayed in a different color from the received data for easy differentiation.

You have now mastered how to use the Output Panel to control and communicate with your project