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Serial Monitor

Code Kit Pro includes a powerful built-in serial monitor available across all platforms, including web and desktop apps. With the serial monitor, it's easy to view, analyse, and graph live data output from your coding projects.

Accessing the Serial Monitor

Access the serial monitor by clicking the Serial button in the sidebar. If you're on the web, make sure you're signed in to your EduKits account. You'll need an active Code Kit Pro subscription to use the serial monitor.

Serial button in the sidebar

The Serial button is located in the sidebar.

View serial output

To begin listening over the serial port, first make sure you're linked to a device. You may already be linked to a board from the Editor screen if you just uploaded code.

The Link (and Unlink, once connected) button in the top toolbar lets you connect to a device. When the serial output is empty and there is no connected device, there's also a Link button in the centre of the screen.

Link to a device

The Link button is used to connect to a device.

Serial output formats

The serial monitor in Code Kit currently offers two output modes:

  • Raw — Displays the serial output as timestamped lines of text. This mode will work regardless of what's being printed over serial.
  • Graph — Graphs numeric serial output over time, with the opportunity to display multiple variables at once.

Switch between the two modes at any time using the toggle switch in the top toolbar.

Troubleshooting

No serial output

If you're not seeing any serial output, make sure you're linked to a device. If you're linked and still not seeing any output, check the following:

  1. Baud rate — Make sure the baud rate in your code matches the baud rate in the serial monitor.
    • The device baud rate is set in the serial begin block in your code.
    • The serial monitor baud rate is set in the top toolbar (top right).
  2. Code — Make sure your code is printing to the serial port.
    • Use a serial begin block in the setup.
    • Make sure you have a serial print block somewhere in your code.
    • Check that the serial print block will logically execute.

Empty graph output

The serial monitor will only graph numeric output. If you're not seeing any data on the graph, either the data isn't numeric or there is no data being received.