This is a small library which extent the Serial class in Arduino.

Table of Contents

• Intension
• ANSI/VT100 Terminal Control Escape Sequences
• Requirements
• How to install Arduino libraries
• Terminal Settings
• Example
• LICENSE

I wanted to program a little Pin overview for the AAR-04 AREXX ARDUINO ROBOT which I lent me out. The Pin overview should look like this:

Every X seconds the values should be refreshed. For this I intentional refresh the hole table. Not nice but should work was what I thought. Unfortunately, the buffer was not big enough and not the hole table was printed. The result was that I only print the table structure and update only the values. To realize this, I wrote this library. Due to this lirary I am able set the courser to the right place and override the old values.

The Pin overview program could be found here.

Many computer terminals and terminal emulators support colour and cursor control through a system of escape sequences. One such standard is commonly referred to as ANSI Colour. Several terminal specifications are based on the ANSI colour standard, including VT100.

This library based on "ANSI/VT100 Terminal Control Escape Sequences", and an ASCII table for further methods.

The serial monitor from the arduino IDE does not support everything.

I recommend for a nearly full support PuTTY for Windows user.

For information on installing libraries, see the Guide "Installing Additional Arduino Libraries".

In short, copy the library files to your library folder, restart your Arduino IDE and add the library.

Many terminals like PuTTY have different settings avalible and different defaults. If something is not working, you should look in the terminal settings if you are able enable the support. If there isn't a settings for this then you should look if the terminal support this anyway.

Example: PuTTY can support blinking text, but it is disabled by default:

The following little example can be also found here: /examples/SerialExamples.ino.

A better and maybe a little bit more complex example is the project which I mentioned in the intention. This project could be found here.

#include <SerialExtended.h>

// Baudrate for serial monitor.
#define SERIAL_BAUD 9600


void setup() {
  // put your setup code here, to run once:
  // set up the serial port
  Serial.begin(SERIAL_BAUD);
}


void loop() {
  // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
  if (Serial.available()) {
  	// Read user string
    String text = Serial.readString();

    // Set terminal attributes
    SuperSerial.SetAttributeMode(2, 41, 5);
    // or
    //SuperSerial.SetAttributeMode(41); // Red background color
    //SuperSerial.SetAttributeMode(5);  // Text blink
    // or
    //SuperSerial.SetAttributeMode(SerialExtended::DisplayAttributes::B_Red);
    //SuperSerial.SetAttributeMode(SerialExtended::DisplayAttributes::Blink);
    // or 
    //SuperSerial.SetAttributeMode(SuperSerial.DisplayAttributes::B_Red);
    //SuperSerial.SetAttributeMode(SuperSerial.DisplayAttributes::Blink);
    // or
    //SuperSerial.SetAttributeMode(2, SuperSerial::DisplayAttributes::B_Red, SerialExtended::DisplayAttributes::Blink);
    // or 
    //SuperSerial.SetAttributeMode(2, SuperSerial.DisplayAttributes::B_Red, SuperSerial.DisplayAttributes::Blink);
    // or
    // ...

    // Output user string
    Serial.print("Com: ");
    Serial.println(text);

    // Output some ASCCI charaters
    SuperSerial.SendASCIICode(65); // A
    SuperSerial.NewLine();
    SuperSerial.SendASCIICode(3, 65, 66, 67); // A, B, C
    SuperSerial.NewLine();

    // Reset all terminal attributes
    SuperSerial.SetAttributeMode(0);

    // Wait a little (0.5 seconds)
    delay(500);

    // Write 999 and change it to 777
    Serial.print(999);
    delay(1000); // Wait a little more (1 second)
    SuperSerial.Backspace(3);
    Serial.println(777);

    SuperSerial.NewLine();
  }
}

GNU General Public License v3.0
For more information see LICENSE file.