Serial port traffic logger

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What is serial port traffic monitoring or logging?

When you send and receive bytes from a serial port you may need to keep records of all the incoming and outgoing traffic from a specific serial port
You can either track it manually or visually but when the serial buffers are tool long or the traffic is continuos you may need to record it to a file.
This is exactly what SerialTool offers you.

What kind of serial communication data can I track?

With SerialTool you can record Hexdecimal incoming and outgoing data as well as ASCII data.
All your traffic can be stored in a text file for an easy off-the-records analysis.

28/12/2022@22:43:10.829::Packet[00000001l]>>Serial [1] [[COM5] - USB Serial Port] Sent 17 bytes.
41|42|43|44|45|46|47|48|49|4C|4D|4E|4F|50|51|52 || A B C D E F G H I L M N O P Q R
53| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | || S

28/12/2022@22:43:36.550::Packet[00000004l]>>Serial [1] [[COM5] - USB Serial Port] Sent 25 bytes.
54|68|69|73|20|69|73|20|61|20|73|65|72|69|61|6C || This is a serial
20|54|6F|6F|6C|20|6C|6F|67| | | | | | | || Tool log

How can I save data to a file?

In SerialTool, you have the ability to store your serial port traffic in a binary file.
Each individual packet received or transmitted will be either appended to an existing file or a new file will be created if one doesn't already exist.
This proves especially valuable when you intend to analyze serial communication traffic, such as firmware downloads, utilizing a man-in-the-middle approach.
A binary file will be generated, ensuring you can effortlessly retrieve your valuable data.
Currently, this feature is exclusively accessible to PRO users.

Can I check each serial communication data packet?

SerialTool is capable to track every each serial communication packet coming in and going out from your Serial port easily and cleanly.
Each data packet is saved in Hexadecimal and ASCII format with its timestamp and length.

Why is serial data packet so important?

Serial communication with embedded devices like Arduino
or proprietary devices may have little time delays between bytes and the serial port driver (while reading from the serial port) may consider the chunk of data as a packet.
Using SerialTool you can also set a specific timeout between bytes to consider the packet as completed.
SerialTool will automatically increase the packet and byte counter for a better offline consultation.

Serial communication byte to byte timeout.

As previously mentioned the Asynchronous Serial communication may have a delay from a stream of data. This may occur for different reasons.
The more advanced Serial communication softwares like SerialTool can handle the byte to byte timeout which determins that a packet is received.
In the next picture you will better understand the whole timout concept:

Serial Byte to Bye timeout configuration

As previously mentioned the Asynchronous Serial communication may have a delay from a stream of data. This may occur for different reasons.
The more advanced Serial communication softwares like SerialTool can handle the byte to byte timeout which determins that a packet is received.
In the next picture you will better understand the whole timout concept: