A basic tool for testing your serial port connection on your Mac isCoolTerm by Roger Meier:
![Port Port](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126407951/453494826.png)
CoolTerm is a simple serial port terminal application (no terminalemulation) that is geared towards hobbyists and professionals with aneed to exchange data with hardware connected to serial ports suchas servo controllers, robotic kits, GPS receivers, microcontrollers,etc.
You can download CoolTerm here (mirror).
Step 1 - Start CoolTerm¶
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CoolTerm is idle state when you open it. First you need to select andconfigure the serial port by pressing the options button.
Step 2 - Configure and select the Serial Port¶
Configure the serial port and select the serial port. If CoolTermdoesn’t show your serial port, you need to press the Re-Scan SerialPorts button. The serial port should show up in the selection list, ifit doesn’t show, please check if the driver has been installed correctly (see support).
Serial Adapter For Mac
Press the ok button when you’re finished.
Step 3 - Use the Serial Port¶
CoolTerm is still Idle, press the Connect button to open the serialport. After pressing this button the character your type are send to theouter-space via the serial port, and characters it receives aredisplayed in the window. You can also monitor the handshake signals viathe signal LEDS in the right corner, and you can control the RTS and DTRsignal by pressing the signal LEDS
I bought a USB Serial port that had MAC drivers. Check before you buy it that it has drivers. Not all USB Serial have MAC support. I assume that you have installed the correct drivers from here.
Serial Port For Macbook Pro
First, open Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal). Next, type
ls /dev/tty.*
to get a list of your serial lines. Pick the one that you want to open. For example, my list looks like this:
gf:dev gf$ ls -al tty.*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 4 Jan 25 07:32 tty.Bluetooth-Modem
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 8 Jan 25 07:32 tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 10 Jan 25 09:20 tty.PL2303-0000103D
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 0 Jan 25 07:32 tty.SerialPort-1
gf:dev gf$
And I know /dev/tty.PL2303-0000103D is the USB-to-serial adaptor becuase it’s connected, if you unplug it the tty.PL2303-0000103D stops being listed.
Serial Port Monitor For Mac
Knowing the serial port, you can just type screen portname datarate to show the serial data on the screen. In my case, it was:
screen /dev/tty.PL2303-0000103D 9600
To quit the screen app, type control-A, then control-.
Postscript
I don’t think that this is very complete, but it worked for me and might help you to get your USB serial working. Please let me know if there anything I can add to complete this piece.
Mac Os Serial Terminal
Update 2008/12/28: A reader has pointed out this article is based on a similar article at†http://www.tigoe.net/pcomp/resources/archives/avr/000749.shtml. I must have copied some of the text and then mistakenly believed it was my own. Apologies for this mistake.