SerialUI, the Arduino serial/terminal user interface, and Druid4Arduino, the automatic GUI for SerialUI-enabled devices, have both been updated and are available for download.

SerialUI

SerialUI has been expanded to include new functionality, the most important of which are:

• A “user-presence” callback.  You can now specify a function which will be periodically executed while a user is interacting with SerialUI.  This allows your program to keep performing functions that need to be handled, even while in the while userPresent()/handleRequests() loop, which is useful if you need to check for conditions or manage components even while the person is using the terminal.  See the setUserPresenceHeartbeat()/setUserPresenceHeartbeatPeriod() methods in the SerialUI advanced usage page.
• SerialUI-determined Druid4Arduino termination.  Calling the SerialUI exit() method, already available in previous versions to “quit” the UI from the Arduino, now also sends a signal that (newer versions of) Druid4Arduino will interpret as a termination command.  This will end the GUI program (rather abruptly, at this time, so make sure your users know that this is supposed to be happening).

Druid4Arduino

Druid4Arduino under windows

The main change with Druid has been to support the SerialUI termination order, though some work was also done to make the GUI look a bit better under Windows (which isn’t obvious for me, as I’m coding everything under Linux–should you care to assist on this front, please just get in touch).

So get the updated version of SerialUI and Druid4Arduino today, and let me know how it goes!

Have fun :)