Hardware Lab

No. This runs entirely in the browser using the Web Serial API, so there is nothing to install and no admin rights needed — which is the whole point on a locked-down school or work laptop where the Arduino IDE cannot be installed. Most modern boards (genuine Arduino, ESP32 dev boards, Raspberry Pi Pico, micro:bit) are recognised straight away. Some very cheap clones using CH340 or CP2102 USB-serial chips still need that chip's driver installed at the operating-system level on Windows; on a Chromebook they generally just work.

Because Mozilla and Apple have deliberately chosen not to implement these APIs. Firefox's official standards position lists Web Serial, WebUSB, WebHID and Web Bluetooth as harmful, and Safari has declined them too. Their reasoning is genuine: USB and serial devices were designed on the assumption that only trusted software on your own machine would ever talk to them, so letting any website reach them exposes device firmware to a place it was never designed to be reachable from — and the exact set of devices you own is a strong fingerprint. Google's counter-argument is that access is gated behind a secure connection, a deliberate click, and a picker where you choose one specific device, so no site can quietly enumerate your hardware. Both positions are reasonable, and it is an honest open disagreement about how far the web should reach into your machine rather than a bug or an oversight. This tool works in Chrome, Edge, Opera and ChromeOS; in Firefox and Safari the Simulator still works fully.

No. Every transport here requires you to click Connect and then pick a specific device from a browser-controlled prompt that this page cannot see, script or bypass. Nothing is listed, opened or read until you choose it, the permission applies to that one device, and you can revoke it from the padlock icon in the address bar. It also only works over an encrypted connection.

Over USB serial: Arduino (Uno, Nano, Mega, Leonardo), ESP32 and ESP8266, Raspberry Pi Pico, STM32 boards, GPS modules, GRBL CNC controllers, Marlin 3D printers, digital scales, LoRa modules and most USB-to-TTL adapters. Over Bluetooth LE: BBC micro:bit, Adafruit Bluefruit, heart-rate monitors, battery and environmental sensors, and anything using the Nordic UART service. Also MIDI keyboards and controllers, game controllers, and USB/HID devices for identification and raw input reports.

It reads whatever your device prints and looks for numbers. 1.2,3.4,5.6 becomes three channels. temp:21.5, humidity:40 becomes two named series. A single number becomes one series. GPS NMEA sentences are decoded into latitude, longitude, altitude, speed and satellite count. If a line has no numbers it just appears in the console. You do not have to change your sketch or configure anything.

No. Everything — the serial stream, the graphs, the recording and the CSV export — happens inside your browser tab. Nothing is uploaded, and the page works offline once loaded.

Almost always because something else already has it. The Arduino IDE's own serial monitor, PlatformIO, a terminal program or a previous tab holds the port exclusively — close it and try again. Unplugging and replugging the board also clears a stuck port.