User Manual

Advanced Serial Console on Mac and Linux

Connecting to the serial console on Mac and Linux uses essentially the same process. Neither operating system needs

drivers installed. On MacOSX, Terminal comes installed. On Linux, there are a variety such as gnome-terminal (called

Terminal) or Konsole on KDE.

What's the Port?

First you'll want to find out which serial port your board is using. When you plug your board in to USB on your

computer, it connects to a serial port. The port is like a door through which your board can communicate with your

computer using USB.

We're going to use Terminal to determine what port the board is using. The easiest way to determine which port the

board is using is to first check without the board plugged in. On Mac, open Terminal and type the following:

ls /dev/tty.*

Each serial connection shows up in the /dev/ directory. It has a name that starts with tty. . The command ls shows

you a list of items in a directory. You can use * as a wildcard, to search for files that start with the same letters but end

in something different. In this case, we're asking to see all of the listings in /dev/ that start with tty. and end in

anything. This will show us the current serial connections.

For Linux, the procedure is the same, however, the name is slightly different. If you're using Linux, you'll type:

ls /dev/ttyACM*

The concept is the same with Linux. We are asking to see the listings in the /dev/ folder, starting with ttyACM and

ending with anything. This will show you the current serial connections. In the example below, the error is indicating

that are no current serial connections starting with ttyACM .