Serial port sniffer that displays data over wifi on your phone, PC... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: frenky
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 14, 2015, 08:44:53 am
content: Hi guys.I've made a project which might be interesting for those who are into debugging and hacking electronics.Video of router boot-up:All the code is on the hackaday site:https://hackaday.io/project/5680-hardware-serial-port-monitor-with-wifi

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2015, 10:25:06 am
content: Nice, but a pro-grade serial port monitor, is more like a logic analyser with protocol analysis. Capturing the data stream in one direction as you have done isn't too difficult, but its a far more difficult task to monitor both the data stream to a device and its replies, either timestamping each character or at least keeping the two streams in relative temporal order and to display both streams in a way that allows the user to see the temporal relationship between the data sent and the replys. It gets even nastier if you need the capability to monitor the handshake lines and the relationship between their transitions and the data streams.

author: frenky
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 14, 2015, 10:50:11 am
content: Tnx for you input.I doubt that any pro will use arduino for serial monitoring but it might come handy for somebody... I guess?

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2015, 11:18:20 am
content: Most of us would probably use a simple bluetooth <=> serial module and a terminal app on the phone or tablet. As long as it can be configured over bluetooth and set to ignore config commands in its serial data stream, you don't really need anything else except level shifters.Anyway unless you need the isolation or your phone cant do OTG host mode for a USB <=> serial cable, IMHO its more trouble than its worth as a WiFi or bluetooth solution will of course need to be powered, so that's either a battery pack or a power pack needed as well.However, I'm sure you've learned a lot developing it, I presume it meets your current specific needs and if you want to further extend its functionality to exceed the capabilities of a simple serial link monitering a single data stream, you are well placed to do so.

author: frenky
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 14, 2015, 11:28:37 am
content: Yes I did learn alot... Lua for ESP was something completely new to me and I'm really starting to love NodeMCU and ESP8266.

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2015, 11:35:22 am
content: Nice project. Thanks for sharingI have been looking for a simple serial monitor of recent but have not found what I am looking for.Does anyone know of a two wire RS232 monitor that can be quickly connected to a DUT serial line and that will auto recognise baud rate etc and quickly show what ASCII data is passing over the RS232 unidirectionally ?A scenario...... I have dedicated computers buried inside equipment that often have RS232 engineering ports on the PCB. I am looking for the simplicity of a logic probe that auto configures itself like many simple DSO's and displays what the SBC is saying at boot.Presently I have to use a DSO to discover the baud rate, parity, data bits, stop bits etc before telling my logic analyzer what it is looking at. Alternatively I just set the common start, stop data and parity values and step through the baud rates. An LA also needs my PC to be be present and that makes the quick monitoring of a port a more time consuming and bulky process.Having seen devices like the Bus Pirate and protocol analyzers I hoped that someone had designed something that could do the above and display the text on a built in screen with page up and down capability. Sadly I am not a coder so such programming is currently beyond me.If anyone knows of such a device on the hobby market, I would love to hear about itAurora