Set-up

Serial Terminal Programs (Windows)

I use either

• YAT, or
• PuTTY, or
• Tera Term, or
• CoolTerm, or
• Astrobe’s built-in terminal

There exist quite a few serial terminal programs for Windows. Tera Term and PuTTY are both solid programs, but I have run into the following limitations regarding input:

• Tera Term: does not have a line input mode, ie. allowing to compose a complete text line of input before sending it to the MCU’s UART.
• PuTTY: does offer line input mode, but for some reason inserts a time delay between the last character and the end of line character. This interferes with using the timeout interrupt of the UART.

I have been using YAT and CoolTerm lately.¹

Set the baudrate as indicated in the example description, or as defined in the example’s Main module.

3.3V USB-to-serial UART Connection

• Use a USB-to-serial cable or a USB-to-serial board.
• For example:
  • cable: DSD TECH SH-U09G
  • board: Waveshare FT232 USB UART Board

Make sure you use the TTL-level 3.3V version of any USB-to-serial cable or board, or set the voltage level accordingly if possible, else you might fry your RP.

Two-terminal Set-up (Pico)

Connect the host computer using two USB-to-serial cables or boards, as follows:

• Terminal one: tx: pin 0, rx: pin 1
• Terminal two: tx: pin 4, rx: pin 5

One-terminal Set-up (Pico)

Connect the host computer using a USB-to-serial cable or board, as follows:

• Terminal one: tx: pin 0, rx: pin 1