# SerialPlot

Small and simple software for plotting data from serial port in realtime.

![SerialPlot v0.4 Screenshot](http://i.imgur.com/Wb53LRt.png)

## Features
* Reading data from serial port
* Binary data formats (u)int8, (u)int16, (u)int32, float
* User defined frame format for robust operation
* ASCII input (Comma Separated Values)
* Synchronized multi channel plotting
* Define and send commands to the device in ASCII or binary format
* Take snapshots of the current waveform and save to CSV file

See
[hackaday.io](https://hackaday.io/project/5334-serialplot-realtime-plotting-software)
page for [screenshots](https://hackaday.io/project/5334/gallery).

## Installation

### Linux

You can install SerialPlot for Ubuntu/Linux Mint (and other ubuntu based
distributions) via
[Ubuntu PPA](https://launchpad.net/~hyozd/+archive/ubuntu/serialplot). Use
below commands to add ppa to your system and install SerialPlot.

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hyozd/serialplot
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install serialplot


### Windows

You can obtain windows installation packages from
[downloads](https://bitbucket.org/hyOzd/serialplot/downloads)
section. As of moment there are only 64 bits packages.

## Dependencies
- Qt 5, including SerialPort module
- Qwt 6.1

## Building

### Obtain Dependencies

- Qt5 development packages
- Qt5 SerialPort module
- CMake
- Mercurial

Under Ubuntu/Debian:
```sudo apt-get install qtbase5-dev libqt5serialport5-dev cmake mercurial```

### Download and Install Qwt

[Qwt](http://qwt.sourceforge.net) is the library that provides
plotting widgets for SerialPlot. You have 3 different options for Qwt.

* Leave it to serialplot build scripts. Qwt will be downloaded over
  SVN and built for you.

* If your linux distribution has `libqwt-qt5-dev` or `qwt-qt5-devel`
  package, install it and set `BUILD_QWT` cmake option to `false`.

* Download Qwt 6 [here](http://sourceforge.net/projects/qwt/files/)
  and build it yourself per these
  [instructions](http://qwt.sourceforge.net/qwtinstall.html#qwtinstall-unix)
  and install. Make sure you use Qt5 (not Qt4) to build. And set
  `BUILD_QWT` cmake option to `false`.

### Download and Build SerialPlot

You can use Mercurial to download SerialPlot source code. Or you can
download it from here:
https://bitbucket.org/hyOzd/serialplot/downloads

    hg clone https://hyOzd@bitbucket.org/hyOzd/serialplot
    cd serialplot
    mkdir build && cd build
    cmake ..
    make

You can also build with QtCreator IDE using `serialplot.pro` file.

## Known Issues
- On Ubuntu 16.04 / Linux Mint 18, removing USB serial device while it
  is open in SerialPlot, causes application to go into a nasty loop
  and eventually it crashes. This is a bug of Qt 5.5. I have uploaded
  a patched version of the problematic `libqt5serialport5` package to
  launchpad ppa. If you install SerialPlot from there, you shouldn't
  have any problems.

- Port error 13 happens when closing. This is a Qt issue. It's known
  to not happen with Qt 5.4.1 . Not fatal.

## License
This software is licensed under GPLv3. See file COPYING for details.