Serial Terminal View with Eclipse Kepler

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Erich Styger

Nearly all of my projects have built-in command line support: using a serial connection, I can send commands or inspect the system status. For this I have my command line Shell which works over serial-to-Bluetooth, serial-to-USB, USB CDC or with a physical serial (COM) port. But what I need on the host system is a Terminal program: I can use either an external program. There are many ones available (Tera Term, PuTTY, …) where Termite is my favorite one. But it is possible to extend Eclipse so it has its own Terminal view too :-).

Eclipse Terminal View

Host Support, and a Warning

A note of warning here: It looks like Serial Terminal support in Eclipse can be challenging! I’m using Windows 7 64bit, but I was not able to get it working with the 64bit Eclipse Kepler. It worked (with some UI issues) in 32bit Eclipse on Windows 7 64bit. It seems that only the 32bit Eclipse on a 32bit Windows platform works smoothly with the Terminal view. Even Linux is not free of problems: if you want to use the Terminal view in Linux, please check out this post by Karibe: http://karibe.co.ke/2014/03/eclipse-kepler-terminal-plugin-serial-port-console-in-linux/

Installation

Use the menu Help > Install New Software and enter

http://download.eclipse.org/releases/kepler

as update site. Under ‘Mobile and Device Development’, select ‘Target Management Terminal’:

Installing Target Management Terminal

Then go through the installation process, and at the end you are asked to restart Eclipse.

There is a second download needed to have the Terminal working with serial ports.

http://rxtx.qbang.org/eclipse

Because recently that site has been often down, I have put a mirror on Sourceforge:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mcuoneclipse/files/Eclipse%20Plugins/RxTx/

💡 This mirror has a .zip file so you can download install it from your local machine.

Alternatively, this Eclipse Update Site can be used:

archive.eclipse.org/tm/updates/rxtx/

Installing RXTX Plugins

Then go through the installation process, with a restart of Eclipse at the end.

Using the Terminal View

To open/add the new Terminal view, use the menu Window > Show View > Other. Select the Terminal view under the Terminal group:

Opening Terminal View

❗ Don’t select the ‘Terminals’ (with ‘s’) view: that’s something different.

This opens a Terminal view:

Terminal View

💡 You can open as many views as you want.

To configure the connection, click on the Settings button:

Terminal View Settings

Change the settings to use a Serial connection:

Changing Settings to Serial

Then you can configure your connection settings:

Terminal Connection Settings

❗ I have several seconds delay on Windows 7 64bit (with 32bit Eclipse) until the dialog shows up. The other thing I think is problematic are high COM port numbers (I things like COM80): using lower COM port numbers (below 20?) seems to cause less issues.

There is a button to toggle the command input field. Alternatively I can (blindly) type text into the view and hit enter:

Toggle Command File Input

❗ Under 64bit somehow the command input field was not showing up at the bottom of the view, but on the right side instead?

Problem under 64bit

Summary

Having a terminal view inside Eclipse is a very useful thing, so no other terminal program is needed. On the other end, you might find specialized external terminals still valuable, as they offer different sets of options and features. As the Terminal view is not working for me inside the 64bit Eclipse version, I continue to use an external terminal for my serial connections. But for 32bit users the built-in one in Eclipse can be a good alternative.

Happy Terminaling 🙂

32 thoughts on “Serial Terminal View with Eclipse Kepler”

Charles Palmer on March 23, 2014 at 21:32 said:

Slightly off topic, but not completely off topic: it would be very convenient (next time you visit the shell code) to add a feature such that the tab key repeated the previous command… to save typing, of course.

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- Erich Styger on March 23, 2014 at 21:35 said:
  
  Hi Charles,
  I think this is not a feature of the target (the Shell component running on the microprocessor), but a feature of the terminal on the host? For example my Termite Terminal program already does this.
  
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  - acutetech on March 23, 2014 at 22:08 said:
    
    Hi Erich
    
    I have just downloaded Termite, and see it has a good command replay feature. I will play with it.
    
    I have used Tera Term for a long time. It does not have this feature, AFAIK, but other features I would be reluctant to do without. So I am not convinced that a basic “repeat last line” feature would not be a useful addition to Shell…
    
    Regards – Charles
    
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Nikhil on April 11, 2014 at 13:56 said:

Hi Erich,
I am not able to download the S/W from the first website, Can you help me out with the problem

I am getting an error saying that

Cannot complete the install because of a conflicting dependency.
Software being installed: Target Management Terminal 3.3.100.201308290741 (org.eclipse.tm.terminal.sdk.feature.group 3.3.100.201308290741)
Software currently installed: Remote System Explorer End-User Runtime 3.3.1.FSL_b22_4085-A1 (org.eclipse.rse.feature.group 3.3.1.FSL_b22_4085-A1)

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- Erich Styger on April 11, 2014 at 13:59 said:
  
  Hi Nikhil,
  are you using Kepler? I suggest to have the source files deselected, probably there is a missing dependency somewhere. I did not see that problem on my end.
  
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  - Nikhil on April 14, 2014 at 08:09 said:
    
    Hi Erich,
    CW is throwing me an Error saying
    
    Some sites could not be found. See the error log for more detail.
    Unknown Host: rxtx.qbang.org/eclipse/content.xml
    rxtx.qbang.org
    No repository found at github.com/ErichStyger/mcuoneclipse/tree/master/EclipsePlugins/RxTx.
    
    Help me in deselecting the Source files.
    
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    - Erich Styger on April 14, 2014 at 11:15 said:
      
      Please try archive.eclipse.org/tm/updates/rxtx/ instead. The qbang site is still down 😦
      
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M.Bozkurt on January 3, 2015 at 20:19 said:

I have a question. Can we add 74880 baudrate on the terminal? How?

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- Erich Styger on January 4, 2015 at 08:13 said:
  
  Yes, on the microcontroller side you can use any baudrate, as long it is in the +/- 1.5% accuracy, and your microcontroller clock is fast enough. So for the KL25Z, make sure that you run with miximum clock speed (48 MHz).
  On the host side, make sure that you have a terminal program which allows to use such a unusual baud rate, e.g. putty.
  
  I hope this helps,
  Erich
  
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  - M.Bozkurt on January 4, 2015 at 10:59 said:
    
    I am using esp8266 and default bootloader baud is 74880. I tried change setting in terminal plugin settings but it hasn’t 74880. Can we add this anyway?
    
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    - Erich Styger on January 4, 2015 at 11:04 said:
      
      Which ‘terminal plugin’? PuTTY? It should accept any baud settings.
      
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    - M.Bozkurt on January 4, 2015 at 11:10 said:
      
      i am using target management terminal as your topic.
      
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    - Erich Styger on January 4, 2015 at 11:37 said:
      
      The Eclipse Terminal view is not a fully fledged Terminal program. I suggest that you use an external (outside of Eclipse) terminal program like Termite (www.compuphase.com) or puTTY.
      
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Dale Rodda on March 10, 2015 at 14:51 said:

Hi. This looks interesting. Have you tried this with KDS 2?

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- Erich Styger on March 10, 2015 at 15:20 said:
  
  No, I have not tried it with KDS. As KDS is Eclipse Kepler, I believe it will have the same problems, so I have not tried it.
  
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  - dale rodda on March 10, 2015 at 20:18 said:
    
    Hi. My basic problem is I need a interrupt driven serial communications in KDS with PE but NOT using KSDK. Is it possible to modify ConsoleIO to use interrupts? I have installed the 03-FEB-2015 version of your PE components. Any suggestions on adding interrupt based communications?
    
    Thanks
    
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    - Erich Styger on March 11, 2015 at 09:24 said:
      
      Hi dale,
      I’m using the AsynchroSerial component, and this one offers interrupt capability. Basically the application sends data to to a buffer, and then this buffer is sent with interrupts, and data is received with interrupts. Make sure you allocate a buffer large enough for your application needs. You might look at my ‘Shell’ example projects on GitHub which is using that.
      
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    - dale rodda on March 11, 2015 at 11:53 said:
      
      thanks. I will look at the shell example.
      
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Mike on March 11, 2015 at 16:13 said:

When trying to add the Terminal view I don’t have the Terminal group available. Any help?

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- Erich Styger on March 11, 2015 at 16:18 said:
  
  As noted in the article, in my view the Terminal view is broken in Eclipse Kepler. I recommend that you use an external terminal client instead 😦
  
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  - Mike on March 11, 2015 at 23:53 said:
    
    I’m using Eclipse Luna. I was able to add the Terminal view on both of my WinXP machines, but not on my WindowsServer2008 machine.
    
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  - Mike on March 12, 2015 at 14:21 said:
    
    Haven’t tested it yet, but I seem to have it available under Show View -> Target Explorer Views -> Terminals.
    
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  - Mike on March 13, 2015 at 15:18 said:
    
    I tested it. “Terminals” under “Target Explorer Views” works as a serial terminal.
    
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  - Mike on March 16, 2015 at 20:01 said:
    
    This is what I’m using now. Works with my WinServer2008.
    
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TM on June 4, 2015 at 17:58 said:

This also worked on Luna (Windows) for me but the Luna repository (http://download.eclipse.org/releases/luna) lists under Mobile and Device Development:

Target Management Terminal (Core SDK)
Target Management Terminal (Deprecated)

and I could only get it to work with the latter – the Deprecated version.
When I chose the Core SDK version and installed RXTX no Terminal node appeared in the Show View treeview.
I wonder if/when it might work with the non deprecated/Core SDK version because I presume that the deprecated version will disappear at some stage…?

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- TM on June 4, 2015 at 17:59 said:
  
  Doh! Just saw this after posting…. Sorry! 🙂
  
  Serial Terminal View in Eclipse Luna
  
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racomrcortes on May 25, 2016 at 04:24 said:

Dear Erich
As always, we were very delighted to be in your presentation in the FTF
Now we are trying to reproduce all you teach to us, with our students, and I have some questions
I am using TASK LIST freertos, but I can’t see the runtime column, its blank.
Do I need to do something extra?
What are the steps to change the USB_MOUSE example to the FRDM K64 Board ?
Thanks and regards from CD MEX
RAUL

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- Erich Styger on May 25, 2016 at 08:40 said:
  
  Hi Raul,
  in order to see the runtime statistics, you need to enable configUSE_TRACE_FACILITY plus configGENERATE_RUN_TIME_STATS.
  In my example I’m using the SysTick as the performance counter with
  #define configGENERATE_RUN_TIME_STATS_USE_TICKS 1 /* 1: Use the RTOS tick counter as runtime counter. 0: use extra timer */
  #define configGENERATE_RUN_TIME_STATS 1 /* 1: generate runtime statistics; 0: no runtime statistics */
  #define portCONFIGURE_TIMER_FOR_RUN_TIME_STATS() /* nothing */ /* default: use Tick counter as runtime counter */
  unsigned int ulMainGetRunTimeCounterValue(void); /* prototype */
  #define portGET_RUN_TIME_COUNTER_VALUE() ulMainGetRunTimeCounterValue() /* default: use Tick counter as runtime counter */
  and
  void vMainConfigureTimerForRunTimeStats(void) {
  }
  
  unsigned int ulMainGetRunTimeCounterValue(void) {
  return xTaskGetTickCountFromISR();
  }
  
  As for a USB example for the K64F board: I plan to write an article about this, but have not found the time yet.
  Erich
  
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LS on June 20, 2016 at 21:48 said:

Hi,
thanks for the post.

This bug: “Under 64bit somehow the command input field was not showing up at the bottom of the view, but on the right side instead?” seems to still exists, like two years later?

I’m running a 4.5.0.v20150603 org.eclipse.platform…
…
-arch
x86_64
…

Maybe it’s supposed to look like that.

Kind regards

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- Erich Styger on June 20, 2016 at 22:00 said:
  
  It is still broken for me. Maybe just bad luck. I ended up to use terminal programs outside of Eclipse.
  
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