https://serial-studio.com/blog Tutorials and build logs for real-time data visualization with Serial Studio. en-us Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://serial-studio.com/blog/activate-pro-offline https://serial-studio.com/blog/activate-pro-offline Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Licensing Some of the machines that run Serial Studio never touch the internet. Industrial benches, locked-down deployments, and genuinely air-gapped systems cannot do a normal online license check. Offline activation exists for exactly these cases: instead of validating over the network, the machine imports a signed license file that you fetch once from the activation website. https://serial-studio.com/blog/why-serial-studio-has-a-pro-license https://serial-studio.com/blog/why-serial-studio-has-a-pro-license Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Open Source I get a version of this question often: if Serial Studio is open source, why isn't it just free? It is a fair thing to ask, and it deserves an honest answer rather than a marketing one. So here is the whole story, including how the license actually works and why it is built this way. https://serial-studio.com/blog/build-serial-studio-from-source https://serial-studio.com/blog/build-serial-studio-from-source Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Open Source Serial Studio's core is free and open source under the GPLv3, and building it yourself is straightforward. You might do it to run the fully open edition, to audit what the app does, or to contribute a fix. This walks through the requirements and the build on each platform. It follows the instructions in the project's repository, which is the source of truth if anything here drifts. https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-telemetry https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-telemetry Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Telemetry Telemetry is measurement at a distance. The word says exactly that: tele, far, and metron, measure. A rocket cannot pull over so an engineer can read a pressure gauge, a race car cannot stop mid-lap to have its tire temperatures checked, and a weather balloon is not coming back in any useful condition. Telemetry is the discipline of getting the measurement to come to you. https://serial-studio.com/blog/serial-monitor-macos https://serial-studio.com/blog/serial-monitor-macos Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 macOS On Windows, when you need to look at a serial port you reach for PuTTY, RealTerm, or the vendor's tool. On macOS there is no equivalent that ships with the system. You get two command-line utilities, screen and cu, and that is the whole toolbox. For a lot of people this is the first surprise after switching to a Mac for embedded work. https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-can-bus https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-can-bus Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 CAN Bus Open the hood of any car built in the last thirty years and you are looking at a CAN bus. It is also common in industrial machines, electric drivetrains, and any embedded system spread across more than one board. If you have ever wanted to read the data flowing through one, it helps to understand what CAN is first, because it behaves differently from the serial and network links most people start with. https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-modbus https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-modbus Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Modbus Modbus is one of the oldest protocols still in daily use, and if you work anywhere near factory floors, building automation, or energy metering, you will run into it. It is refreshingly simple once the vocabulary clicks. This is a practical tour of what Modbus is and how to read a device that speaks it. https://serial-studio.com/blog/esp32-send-sensor-data-wifi https://serial-studio.com/blog/esp32-send-sensor-data-wifi Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 ESP32 The ESP32's radio is the reason most people pick it, and yet a surprising number of projects still stream their sensor data through the USB cable. Usually that is because the serial monitor is the tool at hand, and sending data over Wi-Fi sounds like it needs a server, a protocol, and an evening of reading. It needs none of that. A plain TCP socket and the same comma-separated lines you already print are enough, and this post walks through the whole thing. https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-mqtt https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-mqtt Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 MQTT MQTT is the messaging protocol that quietly runs a large part of the connected world, from home-automation sensors to industrial telemetry. If you have seen it mentioned in IoT tutorials and never quite pinned down what it does, this is the short version, followed by a way to watch a real MQTT feed in a couple of minutes without buying anything. https://serial-studio.com/blog/plot-x-axis-time-samples-custom https://serial-studio.com/blog/plot-x-axis-time-samples-custom Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Plots When you put a signal on a chart you are really plotting two things: the value on the Y axis, and whatever you are measuring it against on the X axis. Most tools quietly assume the X axis is time and never ask. That default is usually right, but not always, and the cases where it is wrong are exactly the ones that produce a "my graph looks weird" moment. Serial Studio lets a plot use one of three kinds of X axis, and picking the right one clears up a surprising amount of confusion. https://serial-studio.com/blog/sensor-data-transforms https://serial-studio.com/blog/sensor-data-transforms Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Data Processing A sensor almost never hands you the number you actually want. A 10-bit ADC gives you 0 to 1023, not volts. A thermistor gives you counts, not degrees. A load cell gives you millivolts, not kilograms. Somewhere between the raw reading and the dashboard, that value has to become a real, calibrated engineering quantity. The interesting question is where that conversion should happen. https://serial-studio.com/blog/json-misconception https://serial-studio.com/blog/json-misconception Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Under the Hood Here is one of the most common misunderstandings about Serial Studio, and it has tripped up a lot of people over the years. Somebody sees the Project Editor described as editing "JSON project files," or notices the project saves as a .ssproj (which is JSON), and concludes that their microcontroller has to output JSON. Then they go write a JSON serializer on an 8-bit micro, watch it eat their flash and their loop time, and wonder why such a simple task got so hard. https://serial-studio.com/blog/frame-parsers-and-the-empty-parser https://serial-studio.com/blog/frame-parsers-and-the-empty-parser Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Under the Hood Serial Studio is built on one idea: the device sends data, and the host decides what that data means. "Deciding what it means" can happen in a few different places, and knowing which one to use is the difference between a dashboard that behaves and one that mysteriously records every value twice. This post walks through the options from simplest to most involved, and explains a case that surprises people: when the frame parser is supposed to be empty on purpose. https://serial-studio.com/blog/not-just-serial-ports https://serial-studio.com/blog/not-just-serial-ports Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Data Sources The name sets an expectation that the app comfortably exceeds. Serial Studio did begin as a tool for serial ports, and that is still the most common way people use it. But under the hood it is a general real-time data dashboard, and the serial port is only one of ten ways to feed it. If you have been reaching for a different tool the moment your data left the USB cable, this is worth two minutes. https://serial-studio.com/blog/arduino-serial-plotter-alternative https://serial-studio.com/blog/arduino-serial-plotter-alternative Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Arduino The Serial Plotter built into the Arduino IDE is a genuinely useful tool. You print numbers, it draws lines, and for a first look at a sensor it is exactly enough. But most people who use it hit the same wall: the experiment starts working, you want to actually study the data, and the plotter has nothing more to give. This post is about what sits on the other side of that wall, without changing a line of how your sketch prints. https://serial-studio.com/blog/how-to-read-a-serial-port https://serial-studio.com/blog/how-to-read-a-serial-port Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Fundamentals If you have wired up an Arduino, an ESP32, a GPS module, or almost any microcontroller, you have used a serial port, probably without thinking much about what it is. It is worth understanding, because a few minutes on the basics will save you hours of chasing "garbage on the screen" later. https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-serial-studio https://serial-studio.com/blog/what-is-serial-studio Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Overview When people first hear the name "Serial Studio," they usually picture a serial-port terminal. That is where it started, but it is not what it is now. Serial Studio is a cross-platform desktop application that takes a live stream of data from a device and turns it into a real-time dashboard: plots, gauges, maps, 3D views, and more. This is a short tour of what it does and how the pieces fit together.