Any advice re: Windows 7 and Serial not working?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Constantin

Constantin

Well-known member
The messages I have seen on this topic in the past are not encouraging.

With Arduino 1.6.9, the IDE compiles and programs fine thanks to Pauls hard work with the USB loader. However, I cannot ever get the Arduino Serial Monitor to work (the board shows up as COM8 but selecting COM8 and then starting the Serial Monitor results in... nothing!).

Sometimes, either VisualStudio or Putty can connect to the board, but frequently they fail to open the connection and I find the Serial Monitor in Visual Studio to be very fragile... i.e. program the booard with the Teensy loader and the next thing you know, the Visual Studio program throws a conniption fit and restarts in a pique.

Restating the computer doesn't seem to help. Re-installing Arduino, Teensy 1.29, or the Serial driver doesn't result in the desired effect either. Anything else to try? Any programs that are good at figuring out what is ailing this USB / Serial connection? Or Do I need to upgrade to Windows 10 as Paul has suggested in the past to benefit from a fixed USB driver within Windows?
 
Maybe first try reassigning it to a fresh COM port number in the advanced tab in the windows device manager.

The pre-10 bug usually only strikes when some other program had the port open while you reprogram or disconnect the USB cable. If visual studio has the port open and Arduino reprograms, that would definitely do it. A reboot should fix things, at least for the first time any program tries to open the port.

You could also switch to MIDI or RawHID which don't use Serial at all. Teensyduino patches the Arduino Serial Monitor to automatically use HID when those are selected in Tools > USB Type. Windows has very good HID drivers, so that might be the least painful path if things are going really wrong with serial drivers on your machine.

Windows 10 is definitely better for USB. Delays in detecting USB devices are also fixed, which makes it a lot nicer to use.
 
One of the things I like about the Teensy's are the multiple serial ports. I wanted logging for a project I'm working on, wired up Serial 1 to a FTDI cable, opened a serial monitor within the Arduino IDE, and Voila! a comm interface separate from the loader interface. Works like a champ!

On Win 7...
 
That's why I find tyqt so great, SerMon often unreliable on win 7. Win 10 a bit better now that I'm forced to use sermon with tyqt not being k66 ready yet.

Plus tyqt can do multiple active Teensys which SerMon won't
 
Last edited:
defragster said:
That's why I find tyqt so great, SerMon often unreliable on win 7. Win 10 a bit better now that I'm forced to use sermon with tyqt not being k66 ready yet.

Plus tyqt can do multiple active Teensys which SerMon won't
Click to expand...
I keep meaning to try out tyqt, but I can get SerMon to work with multiple Teensys, but it is a pain. You need to start up multiple Arduino processes. That is you can not go from an active Arduino process and do an Open to open up the 2nd Arduino window, but relaunch it. You can then get each process to open up one Serial Monitor... Again a pain.

What I will do some of the time is to use PuTTy and now on Windows 10 KiTTy configured for different COM ports. I have these apps installed mainly to talk to Linux boards, but sometimes use them here as well
 
I regularly clean up my COM and HID ports by go into device manager, under more Actions , view, show hidden devices
then I uninstall all hidden devices (greyed out)
I assume you have admin privs

(OK this in win-10, but on win-7 there should be something similar, maybe google helps)
 
KurtE said:
I keep meaning to try out tyqt, but I can get SerMon to work with multiple Teensys, but it is a pain. You need to start up multiple Arduino processes. That is you can not go from an active Arduino process and do an Open to open up the 2nd Arduino window, but relaunch it. You can then get each process to open up one Serial Monitor... Again a pain.

What I will do some of the time is to use PuTTy and now on Windows 10 KiTTy configured for different COM ports. I have these apps installed mainly to talk to Linux boards, but sometimes use them here as well
Click to expand...

I've got putty on and it is ugly with EOL treatment and slow. Maybe I used to do that with the IDE - or maybe it changed from 1.6.0 - but good to know there is a way to get multiple SerMon on Windows. I wonder if that manages it's own TEMP folder as well? So that one instance could run T_3.2 and the other a T_LC/K66/ESP_8266 without having to change the board and get a full recompile going back and forth?

I've gotten used to TYQT. As great as Teensy is - TYQT is that 'Last Mile' - when it come to ease of connection for debug spew and identifying/managing multiple active devices. Every active device has an ICON (and customizable NAME) and information page to tell you the 'COM#' port - no drop down menu - waiting for device to arrive and then guessing which number is which device. And you can view all in one window or Ctrl+N to pop open multiple instances one for each Teensy. Plus the gratuitous GUI button for RESET with a click and ability to even more easily control the upload/bootloader subject device when it works with 'Integrate to Arduino'. Of course the K66 has rendered TYQT only semi useful these days until Koromix can resolve his recent edits with Win_10 and the new device not having the standard unique HID serial number that was the key of his multi-device tracking. The Integrate works really well since the same code running the Serial port - is programming the device - so it internally manages the handoff and knows when it should be back online.

Paul - that is a good link to Adafruit re-USB. I just came across that elsewhere and seeing 'hidden devices' is handy.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top