# Serial Studio

> Serial Studio is a native, cross-platform desktop application (Windows 10/11, macOS 13+, Linux x86_64/ARM64, Raspberry Pi) that turns live data from hardware devices into a real-time dashboard. It connects over Serial/UART, TCP/UDP, Bluetooth LE, MQTT, Modbus RTU/TCP, CAN Bus (with DBC import), audio input, raw USB (libusb), HID (hidapi) and Process I/O, decodes frames with code-free Built-In templates or custom JavaScript/Lua parsers, draws 20+ widgets (plots, FFT, gauges, GPS maps, 3D plots, XY plots, waterfall spectrograms, live camera view, scripted Canvas2D Painter), records to CSV, MDF4 or a SQLite session database, and can be automated through a setup()/loop() Control Script, a 320+ command TCP JSON API (port 7777), a gRPC streaming API (port 8888) and an MCP server for AI hosts such as Claude Desktop.

Key facts:
- Built with Qt 6 and C++20; renders dashboards at 60 FPS with no telemetry/tracking.
- Dual-licensed: free GPLv3 source build (Serial/UART, TCP/UDP, BLE, standard widgets, CSV, parsers, Control Script, TCP/gRPC/MCP APIs; non-commercial use) and a commercial Pro edition.
- Pro adds: MQTT, Modbus, CAN Bus with DBC import, audio input, raw USB, HID, Process I/O drivers; 3D Plot, XY Plot, Waterfall, ImageView and Painter widgets; plot Sweep/Trigger mode; MDF4 read/write; SQLite session database with HTML/PDF reports; XMODEM/YMODEM/ZMODEM file transfer; multi-device projects; operator deployments (--runtime locked builds); Modbus register-map and CAN DBC importers; and an AI Assistant (bring-your-own-key: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Groq, Mistral, OpenRouter, or fully offline local models via Ollama, llama.cpp, LM Studio, vLLM).
- Pricing: Pro $79.99/year (best value; two months free vs monthly) or $9.99/month or $349 lifetime (5 activations); Small Business $39/month or $349/year (20 activations); Enterprise $99/month or $799/year (100 activations); Test Stand $1,200 one-time (20 device activations, lifetime, for industrial test benches and equipment). Lifetime and Test Stand licenses can activate air-gapped machines offline with a signed license file (https://serial-studio.com/offline-activation). Every official binary includes a one-time 14-day Pro trial, no card required. Commercial use requires a Pro license.
- Typical users: embedded engineers (Arduino, ESP32, STM32, Raspberry Pi), test and HIL benches, automotive/CAN work, industrial Modbus/SCADA monitoring, drone and rocketry telemetry (MAVLink, NMEA), research labs and education.
- Developed by Alex Spataru. Source code: https://github.com/Serial-Studio/Serial-Studio
- Full expanded reference (feature split, pricing detail, FAQ, docs map): https://serial-studio.com/llms-full.txt

## Main pages

- [Home](https://serial-studio.com/): product overview, feature list, downloads for Windows, macOS, Linux and Raspberry Pi, FAQ
- [Pricing](https://serial-studio.com/pricing): free GPLv3 build vs Pro comparison table, plans, licensing FAQ
- [Help Center](https://serial-studio.com/help): full documentation, 63 static topic pages at https://serial-studio.com/help/<topic>, each with a raw markdown twin at /help/<topic>.md
- [Examples](https://serial-studio.com/examples): 30+ open-source example projects with project files and firmware
- [Extensions](https://serial-studio.com/extensions): community add-ons, frame parsers, Painter widgets and themes
- [Gallery](https://serial-studio.com/gallery): screenshots of real dashboards
- [Comparison](https://serial-studio.com/comparison): Serial Studio vs Grafana, Arduino Serial Plotter, LabVIEW, MATLAB, Python, PuTTY and more
- [Blog](https://serial-studio.com/blog): tutorials and build logs for real-time dashboards across aerospace, automotive, robotics, industrial, IoT and education; RSS at /blog/feed.xml

## Documentation (markdown sources)

- [Getting Started](https://serial-studio.com/help/getting-started.md): install, connect, first dashboard
- [Operation Modes](https://serial-studio.com/help/operation-modes.md): Project File, Quick Plot and Console modes
- [Frame Parser Reference](https://serial-studio.com/help/javascript-api.md): Built-In templates, JavaScript and Lua parsers
- [Control Script](https://serial-studio.com/help/control-script.md): setup()/loop() device automation
- [API Reference](https://serial-studio.com/help/api-reference.md): TCP JSON API, 320+ commands
- [gRPC Server](https://serial-studio.com/help/grpc-server.md): typed protobuf streaming API on port 8888
- [AI Assistant](https://serial-studio.com/help/ai-assistant.md): in-app assistant, supported providers and safety model
- [Pro vs Free](https://serial-studio.com/help/pro-vs-free.md): exact feature split between GPLv3 and Pro
- [FAQ](https://serial-studio.com/help/faq.md): common questions
- [Comparison with Alternatives](https://serial-studio.com/help/comparison.md): vs Arduino Serial Plotter, PuTTY, custom scripts
- Complete topic index (63 pages, all sections): https://serial-studio.com/help

## Blog (markdown sources)

- [What Is Serial Studio? A Tour of the Dashboard App](https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-serial-studio.md): overview — the device-sends-data/host-decides model, the three modes, drivers, widgets, recording, APIs, free vs Pro
- [Serial Studio Isn't Just for Serial Ports](https://serial-studio.com/blog/not-just-serial-ports.md): all ten data sources (UART/TCP-UDP/BLE free; MQTT/Modbus/CAN/audio/USB/HID/Process I/O Pro) feed one pipeline
- [Build Serial Studio From Source (GPLv3)](https://serial-studio.com/blog/build-serial-studio-from-source.md): Qt 6.9+/C++20/CMake requirements, per-platform setup, the build commands, and what the GPL build includes vs Pro
- [Why Serial Studio Has a Pro License](https://serial-studio.com/blog/why-serial-studio-has-a-pro-license.md): the MIT→Qt/GPLv3 origin, how the dual license works (SPDX headers, one repo), open source vs paid support, sustainability
- [No, Your Device Doesn't Have to Send JSON](https://serial-studio.com/blog/json-misconception.md): the .ssproj project file is JSON host-side config; the wire format can be CSV, binary or anything a frame parser reads
- [Activate Serial Studio Pro Offline](https://serial-studio.com/blog/activate-pro-offline.md): air-gapped activation for lifetime/test-stand licenses — .ssmachine device file, .sslic license file, three-step exchange
- [How to Read Data From a Serial Port](https://serial-studio.com/blog/how-to-read-a-serial-port.md): what a serial port is, baud rate, 8N1 framing, COM/dev paths, reading it
- [Serial Monitor on macOS: Terminal Tools and a Native App](https://serial-studio.com/blog/serial-monitor-macos.md): /dev/cu vs tty, why screen/cu are awkward, Serial Studio as the native GUI
- [What Is MQTT?](https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-mqtt.md): brokers, topics, wildcards, publish/subscribe, watched via Helsinki's public transit feed
- [Frame Parsers: How Bytes Become Datasets](https://serial-studio.com/blog/frame-parsers-and-the-empty-parser.md): Quick Plot, built-in templates, custom parsers and why the parser is sometimes empty
- [What Is the CAN Bus?](https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-can-bus.md): arbitration IDs, why the ID is not an address, DBC files, VirtualCAN with no hardware
- [What Is Modbus? A Practical Field Guide](https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-modbus.md): registers and coils, RTU vs TCP, function codes, the register-numbering gotcha
- [Calibrate Sensor Data: Counts to Real Units](https://serial-studio.com/blog/sensor-data-transforms.md): dataset transforms and data-table registers for calibration, unit conversion, filtering and shared state
- [A Plot's X Axis: Time, Samples, or Custom](https://serial-studio.com/blog/plot-x-axis-time-samples-custom.md): plotting against time vs sample index vs another dataset (XY plots), and using device timestamps as the X axis
- [An Arduino Serial Plotter Alternative](https://serial-studio.com/blog/arduino-serial-plotter-alternative.md): the IDE plotter's limits (one chart, short window, no export) and Quick Plot as the upgrade — same CSV output, a header line names the channels
- [Send ESP32 Sensor Data Over Wi-Fi](https://serial-studio.com/blog/esp32-send-sensor-data-wifi.md): a complete WiFiServer TCP sketch streaming CSV on port 3333, reading it with the free network driver, plus the UDP and BLE alternatives
- [What Is Telemetry? How Live Data Gets Home](https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-telemetry.md): the sense/sample/encode/transmit/decode chain, downlink vs telecommand, frames and checksums, and the ground station on your desk
- [Draw a Custom Dashboard Widget With Canvas2D](https://serial-studio.com/blog/custom-widgets-canvas2d-painter.md): the Painter widget's paint(ctx, w, h) immediate-mode model, theme palette, dataset access, onFrame state, and the 250 ms watchdog
- [Vibration Analysis With a Sound Card and FFT](https://serial-studio.com/blog/vibration-analysis-sound-card-fft.md): a conditioned piezo disc into line-in as an uncalibrated spectral tool — fault signatures, waterfalls, and the audio input driver
- [Send SCPI and G-code From Your Dashboard](https://serial-studio.com/blog/control-devices-scpi-gcode.md): SCPI and Grbl wire protocols, why control is harder than monitoring, and output widgets with transmit(value) templates
- [Binary Serial Protocols: COBS & MessagePack](https://serial-studio.com/blog/binary-serial-protocols-cobs-messagepack.md): bandwidth math, COBS framing byte by byte, MessagePack sizes, and decoding both with built-in parser templates
- [Monitor Multiple Devices on One Dashboard](https://serial-studio.com/blog/multiple-devices-one-dashboard.md): multi-device mode (Pro) — several sources in one project, each with its own bus type, framing and parser; one recording and timeline; demoed by the Dual Drone Telemetry example
- [Telemetry You Can Trust: Lessons from Production Firmware](https://serial-studio.com/blog/telemetry-lessons-from-production-firmware.md): nine production-firmware habits paired with the host-side machinery that meets them — sentinels caught by transforms, per-link CRCs and sequence counters, source timestamps as a custom X axis, calibration in data-table registers, virtual datasets, a Control Script staleness watchdog, workspace switching, and dashboardTick() simulation with an empty parser
- [Checksums and CRC, Explained](https://serial-studio.com/blog/checksums-and-crc-explained.md): what a checksum catches vs misses, why CRC beats a plain sum, the variants used by NMEA, Modbus, CAN and MAVLink, verifying one on the host
- [Serial Monitor on Windows: Terminal Tools and a Native App](https://serial-studio.com/blog/serial-monitor-windows.md): COM port numbering, PuTTY/Tera Term limits, USB-serial driver quirks, Serial Studio as the native GUI alternative
- [Alarms and Notifications](https://serial-studio.com/blog/alarms-and-notifications.md): the notify* scripting API, latching vs momentary alerts, the Notification Log widget, OS tray toasts, Pro-only gating
- [Data Logging and Session Replay in Serial Studio](https://serial-studio.com/blog/data-logging-and-session-replay.md): CSV vs MDF4 export, the Pro session database, and what replaying a session actually does under the hood
- [Your First Serial Studio Project](https://serial-studio.com/blog/your-first-serial-studio-project.md): the from-zero on-ramp — Quick Plot with no project file, then naming datasets and groups in the Project Editor
- [Serial Studio With STM32 and Raspberry Pi Pico](https://serial-studio.com/blog/stm32-and-pico-with-serial-studio.md): the app reads bytes regardless of MCU brand — HAL UART on STM32, USB CDC on the Pico C SDK, same CSV-line convention
- [What Is MAVLink? Drone Telemetry Explained](https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-mavlink.md): message IDs vs CAN arbitration IDs, the CRC-16 plus CRC_EXTRA seed byte, the built-in MAVLink frame-parser template, the Dual Drone Telemetry example
- Blog index (all posts, RSS): https://serial-studio.com/blog

## Downloads

- [GitHub Releases](https://github.com/Serial-Studio/Serial-Studio/releases/latest): official installers (Windows .msi, macOS .dmg, Linux AppImage x64/arm64)
- [Flathub](https://flathub.org/apps/com.serial_studio.Serial-Studio): Linux Flatpak package
- macOS Homebrew: `brew install --cask serial-studio`

## Purchase and contact

- [Store](https://store.serial-studio.com/): Pro, Small Business, Enterprise and Test Stand licenses (Lemon Squeezy)
- Sales and licensing: alex@serial-studio.com
- Technical support: https://github.com/Serial-Studio/Serial-Studio/issues