SerialShell

Introduction

Windows does not have a native tool for console sessions over serial connections. Historically, that gap has been filled with putty, which I have long considered obnoxious.

(There's nothing wrong with it, but I dislike both the need to download an executable and the need to use a GUI for a CLI session - especially when native tools are perfectly capable of providing the same functionality.)

It's generally known that PowerShell (via .NET assemblies) is capable of providing this functionality, and there are a large number of StackOverflow posts and code samples with rudimentary serial session tools for PowerShell. These generally involve a while loop and a Read-Host command. While this works in some scenarios, it prevents interactivity.

Benefits of SerialShell

• Pure PowerShell serial sessions - no putty necessary
• Fully-interactive serial sessions; Tab-complete, command history searching, and interactive terminal apps all work perfectly fine

Full interactivity is achieved by dispensing with blocking user input (e.g., Read-Host), sending all key-presses to the remote host as soon as they are detected, and using a Background Job to monitor for and handle data received from the remote host.

Usage

New-SerialSession -COMPort 5 -BaudRate 115200 -Parity None -DataBits 8 -StopBits one

Note: COMPort and BaudRate are the only mandatory parameters.