Serial Console

Reach can talk to serial devices — routers, switches, embedded boards, anything with a serial port.

Connecting

The backend provides three operations: list available ports, open a port, and close it.

When you open a serial connection, you specify:

Port name — the system port identifier (e.g., COM3 on Windows, /dev/ttyUSB0 on Linux)
Baud rate — the speed (e.g., 9600, 115200)

Data shows up in the same terminal interface used for SSH, so it feels familiar. Keystrokes are sent to the device in real time.

Port Detection

Reach scans your system for available serial ports and shows them with their type:

USB — USB-to-serial adapters. Shows the product name if available (e.g., “USB - FTDI FT232R”).
PCI — Built-in serial ports on the motherboard.
Bluetooth — Bluetooth serial profiles.
Unknown — Ports that don’t report their type.

The port list refreshes when you open the serial section.

How It Works

When you open a port, Reach:

Opens the serial port at the specified baud rate with a 100ms timeout
Spawns a dedicated reader thread that continuously reads data (1024-byte buffer)
Incoming data is emitted as events (serial-data-{port_name}) and displayed in the terminal
Outgoing data (your keystrokes) goes through an async write channel and gets flushed immediately

The reader thread runs on a real OS thread (not an async task) so it can do blocking reads without holding up anything else. When you close the port, a shutdown signal stops both the reader and writer, with a 3-second timeout for cleanup.

Supported Platforms

Platform	Port format	Example
Windows	COM ports	`COM1`, `COM3`
macOS	TTY devices	`/dev/tty.usbserial-110`
Linux	TTY devices	`/dev/ttyUSB0`, `/dev/ttyACM0`

Common Uses

Configuring network equipment (Cisco, Juniper, MikroTik, etc.)
Debugging embedded systems and microcontrollers
Accessing device consoles that only have serial output
Setting up headless servers or single-board computers (Raspberry Pi, etc.)
Talking to Arduino and other development boards