Serial Communications

When working with serial devices, you may often need to send dummy commands and see what reply you get from the device.

Such tasks are often done using a terminal program.

However, some programs do not display outgoing communication by default. They send what you type, but you don't see it on the screen unless you specifically configure the program for this. And when they finally do display the output, there is often no clear distinction between incoming and outgoing messages, and no Hex representation of the session.

Terminal programs usually support plaintext input. To send a Hex-encoded character, such as STX (0x02), you need to hold down ALT and then type 02. This quickly gets tedious.

In most terminal programs, to change port settings mid-session you must first close the port.

With I/O Ninja, you can clearly see all data in the session, and distinguish incoming and outgoing data easily. Sending hexadecimal data is a breeze — just click the left side of the Transmit bar and type your hex codes directly.

You can also change port settings on-the-fly, without closing the port first.