Newbie question about serial monitor display

1

I am running this code in the atom ide and it works (blinks) …

#include <Arduino.h>
void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
  Serial.println("Starting ...");

  pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);     // Initialize the LED_BUILTIN pin as an output
}
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);   // Turn the LED on (Note that LOW is the voltage level
                                    // but actually the LED is on; this is because
                                    // it is acive low on the ESP-01)
  delay(1000);                      // Wait for a second
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);  // Turn the LED off by making the voltage HIGH
  delay(2000);                      // Wait for two seconds (to demonstrate the active low LED)
}

But where can I see the serial monitor output? A window shows the build and the upload to the board but then the window disappears.

Atom 1.12.7
board: D1 mini
apm 1.12.9
npm 3.10.5
node 4.4.5
python 2.7.6
git 1.9.1
Ubuntu 14.04 trusty

2

Try under

Toolbar > PlatformIO > Serial Monitor

3

Thanks.

That terminal disappears when I build and upload. Do I have to open the terminal and hit reset on very build cycle?

4

Open the serial monitor and then upload. It should temporarily disappear while the upload is in progress. Post a successful upload the serial monitor should automatically open the connection with the previous settings.

5

It appears to permanently disappear. BTW, I also lose the window when I hit the hide icon at the top. How am I supposed to unhide it?

Edit I now see bars at the bottom of the window but they only have icons and the X close icon does nothing.

I also now saw the correct behavior of the serial port opening after an upload. Unfortunately it opens a new shell which takes forever on my system.

I’m also getting two builds starting at the same time. I will play with this longer to see if I can get it to run cleanly.

6

I am guessing that the behaviour you are reporting is more to do with atom IDE rather than platformio??

Did you install the platformio IDE clean or platformio addon on top of atom???

I would try to see if removing the .platformio folder under the users folder might do something. Or the .atom folder.

Unfortunately you will also lose any persistent settings you might have customized. I would just move the folders in question to another location and check if the behaviour still persists.

7

Restarting atom made a big difference.

I love atom and have been using since before 1.0. However, the pio ide seems too complex for me. Can I just use pio on the command-line? Where is this documented?

8

Of course you can.
PIO Core.

http://docs.platformio.org/en/stable/core.html

This is as good a starting point as any.
It gives you a introduction to the commands available and their usage.

Hope this is what you are looking for…

9

When I first found the platformio website I saw the atom ide and jumped right to it since I use atom for all my editing. I skipped right over the obvious.

Thanks again.

10

Maybe you should put “PlatformIO Core” above “PlatformIO IDE” in the left side bar. :slight_smile:

11

More than one way to tie a knot I suppose… :slight_smile:

What I realised is, the more and more I use platformio IDE, the more I realised the need to read the documentation.

It is all there… We just need to spend some quality time understanding it and using it.

12

After I get good at using the pio command-line I’ll go back and try the ide again. I think it will help to know what is going on inside.

PlatformIO looks nice so far.