Sometimes you have to talk to a project to find out what’s going on inside. The [jbtronics] ESP32 console Arduino library promises just that.
The library gives the ESP32 a simple serial console and also works with the Arduino ecosystem. It is set up so that you can easily add your own commands and change the console to fit your own projects. It’s very complete and has some cool features, too. There’s autocomplete and a command history that you can look through. These are the kinds of things you’d expect from a modern OS terminal. There are also a number of built-in system commands that can be used to check the status of things like memory, the network interface, and so on.
The tool can be found in the PlatformIO registry or the Arduino library manager. You’ll need a VT-100-compatible terminal like PuTTY or something similar to use it. This will let you use all the cool features, like color output. [jbtronics] also hopes to port it soon to the ESP8266.
Recently, we’ve also seen some other great serial tools. If you’re coming up with your own cool console hacks, let us know!