RS232 Communication Plugin for NetBeans IDE

In the beginning of November 2011, I posted an article on NetBeans Zone about implementing AVR microcontroller support for NetBeans IDE. For the last month (in my spare time) I have been working to create the first plugin that brings the IDE closer to realizing that goal.

The RS232 communication plugin is almost completely finished. The plugin uses the RXTX library (http://rxtx.qbang.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) and can communicate with any RS232 device, such as the very popular Arduino development boards.

The RS232 communication plugin is only the first of the planned plugins that I wish to create to make NetBeans IDE more compatible for the embedded engineer.

See http://java.net/projects/nbplugin-avr, the project's homepage.

The RS232 window is capable of receiving RS232 communication data and display this data in either ASCII (plain text), hexadecimal, octal or binary values; sending data to the device in either ASCII or hexadecimal values; logging the data to a log file; changing COM port, baud, # databits, parity, stopbits, and some handy UI stuff:

The plugin also has some public API packages that other NetBeans RCP developers can use to implement RS232 communication in their own applications.

This plugin is tested on Windows 7 and Mac OS X. See http://java.net/projects/nbplugin-avr for the latest release and sources (GPL-2.0).

I am currently looking for people who are willing to join the project and help develop and/or test the plugin!

Next step, for AVR support in NetBeans IDE, will be to implement basic AVRDUDE functionality.

Version 0.2 of the RS232 plugin can be downloaded here.

and HAPPY NEW YEAR!