megacom

because minicom sucks

installation

it's a standard setuptools project, clone this repo, then do

pip3 install --user .

or for development

pip3 install --user -e .

usage

usage: megacom [-h] [-b BAUD] [-m MODE] [-l LOGFILE] [tty]

Alternative console-based UART client

positional arguments:
  tty                   Path to UART device [/dev/ttyUSB0]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -b BAUD, --baud BAUD  UART baud rate [115200]
  -m MODE, --mode MODE  UART mode string [8N1]
  -l LOGFILE, --logfile LOGFILE
                        file to log to

sudo

to avoid using sudo, add yourself to the uucp group (on arch) or dialout group (ubuntu/debian), and make sure you don't have ModemManager installed

if you have ModemManager installed it's likely you will need to use sudo. if you absolutely need ModemManager on your system, try stopping it with sudo systemctl stop ModemManager, then unplugging and replugging UART devices. once you're done using megacom, you can restart ModemManager with sudo systemctl start ModemManager, if it was previously running

keyboard shortcuts

CTRL-A is the escape character. CTRL-A + Q quits megacom. CTRL-A + CTRL-A sends a literal CTRL-A

there will be more keyboard shortcuts later, hopefully

non-tty mode

megacom can be run even if stdin is not a tty. in this mode, keyboard shortcuts (CTRL-A) are disabled and input is passed through verbatim. this can be useful to pipe input and output out of a UART device with programs that are not tty-aware

baud

any standard baud rate (as an integer) which is supported by pyserial can be used. usually you want the default (115200)

mode strings

composed of bytesize, parity, and stopbits. usually you want the default (8N1)

the following options are supported

• bytesize: 8, 5, 6
• parity: N (none), E (even), O (odd), M (mark), S (space)
• stopbits: 1, 1.5, 2

examples:

8N1
5E2
6S1.5

windows

untested. it might work tho. don't expect windows to be actively supported because serial on windows is extremely annoying. just use WSL