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Serial Over USB with the Explorer Board

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Morgan Redfield edited this page Nov 30, 2016 · 2 revisions

The Explorer board has a USB jack labeled "UART" that allows you to connect a serial terminal to the Edison. This is great for development and setup.

Connecting to the Edison

  1. Make sure you have the FTDI Virtual Com Port drivers installed. You can get those from here: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

  2. Connect a USB cable between your computer and the UART USB port on the explorer (make sure an Edison is installed on the Explorer first).

Windows

On Windows, you'll need a serial terminal program to communicate with your board. Putty is an excellent free program. You can get it here: http://www.putty.org/

The Putty download is an executable, not an installer. Save the .exe file somewhere you'll remember it, and then double click on it.

Before starting Putty, find out what serial port your Explore enumerated to. Each computer you plug the Explorer board into will assign it a different number, but the computer will always call the Explorer board by that number. To find out what number is assigned to your board, do the following:

  1. Hold down the windows-key and the r-key

  2. In the run box that pops up, type "devmgmt.msc" without the quotes

  3. In the Device Manager window that opens, expand the "Ports (COM & LPT)" section

  4. Assuming nothing else is plugged into your computer, you'll see one entry for "USB Serial Port (COM#)" where # is the ID number of your Explorer board on this computer. If you have a bunch of stuff connected to your computer, you can unplug and replug the Explorer to see which on re-appears. Remember the COM# of this board for later.

  5. Now start Putty.

When you start Putty, you'll get a configuration window that will allow you to choose how to connect to the Explorer board. Set it up as follows:

  1. Change the "SSH" radio button to "Serial"
  2. Change the Serial line dialog box from "COM1" to the correct COM number you found in step 4.
  3. Change the "Speed" to 115200
  4. Press the "Connect" button
  5. If you're staring at a black screen, press the enter key twice.
  6. You should be presented with a login prompt for the Edison's Linux image. Log in with your username/password combination.

Mac

  1. Open a terminal prompt by pressing Cmd-Space and typing terminal into the spotlight prompt.
  2. Select the terminal program to start it.

Now you have a terminal that you can enter commands in. First you'll enter in commands that your Mac will execute, but eventually you'll connect to the Explorer and the terminal will forward all commands to the Linux image on the Intel Edison.

  1. Find the ID of the Explorer board on this computer. To do this, type "ls /dev/cu.usbserial-*" and hit enter
  2. You should see a list of devices. Find the one that has "usbserial" in the name. If there are more than one, then try unplugging and replugging the Edison to see which one changes (note that you'll have to re-run the "ls" command from step 3 after unplugging and after replugging to see the change).
  3. Connect to the Explorer board's Edison by typing "screen /dev/xx.usbserial-XXXXXXXX 115200 –L" where "xx.usbserial-XXXXXXXX" is the name of your Explorer board.
  4. If you're staring at a black screen, press the enter key twice.
  5. You should be presented with a login prompt for the Edison's Linux image. Log in with your username/password combination.

When you're done, you can close the screen session by hitting Clt-a followed by Ctl-k.

See https://software.intel.com/en-us/setting-up-serial-terminal-on-system-with-mac-os-x for more details.

Now what?

You're connected to a Linux terminal. You can do anything you want here. For some ideas, see:

http://www.howtogeek.com/140679/beginner-geek-how-to-start-using-the-linux-terminal/

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