RealTerm tends to be one of my primary go-to debugging tools. It provides a simple and easy way to get a clearer picture in what’s going on with the system. In-circuit debuggers exist but they often fall short when real-time interaction is needed (interrupts, COMS, etc). As opposed to other serial programs like TeraTerm, RealTerm excels when you’re more concerned with byte values than ASCII characters. It may difficult at first to get used to looking at hex data as opposed to reading regular ASCII text, but it has significant advantages. Namely, the code necessary is lighter and faster. This will help mitigate timing issues caused by printing out too much information.
Setting up the serial port
The port configuration can be Port tab. The port list will be automatically generated when you launch the program. Select the baud rate and hit the Change button.
Display formatting
On the Display tab you can set how the data is formatted in the display as well as enabling timestamping of data.
Frame syncing
Using sync bytes greatly helps in alignment, not only for parsing data in your system but also lining up your data to easily read it in the terminal window. In the primary image in this blog post I have it set to a sync byte of 0xFF leading sync.