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Support Forum » writing to the serial terminal

July 31, 2011
by plehrer
plehrer's Avatar

Hi, My computer is running Windows 7.

I am doing the temperature sensor project from the NerdKits guide. It is properly writing the temperature to the LCD, however I am not seeing anything written to my computer. I watched the video for using the printf and scanf functions, and at the end of the video it shows data being written to a "serial terminal."

I have a USB to serial converter which is hooked up to my computer. I use the windows power shell to compile and upload the program to the microcontroller. In the code for the temperature sensor project, there is the line:

"printf_P(PSTR("%.2f degrees Frn"), temp_avg);"

to write the temperature average to the serial port.

Is this not being written to my computer because I am not using a serial port, but a USB to serial converter?

Or is it that I am not properly opening up a "serial terminal"? Wouldn't the power shell that I am using to upload tempsensor.c to the microcrontroller also function as the "serial terminal"? Do I have to reconfigure the yellow and green wires of the USB to serial cable in order to read the temperature?

Thank you for your help,

Peter

July 31, 2011
by plehrer
plehrer's Avatar

I discovered the the forum thread "Viewing Temp Data on PC screen" and download the putty program and successfully configured it. It is now displaying the temp data. Sorry for wasting anybody's time.

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