1. Introduction

The serial port found on the back of most PCs is extremely useful for robotics work. A variety of devices are configured to communicate via a serial port, and you can use it to debug or control your own projects. This project shows you how to use free tools to write programs that use your serial port. We’ll show you how to make your programs compatible with both Microsoft Windows and Linux, and present a method for creating simple graphical interfaces. We will assume you know a bit of C and are comfortable installing software on your computer. Knowing Linux commands like cd, mkdir, and ls will also be helpful.