Picocom

Picocom is a small, lightweight serial terminal emulator used to interact with serial devices such as embedded boards, microcontrollers, and routers. It provides a straightforward way to connect to a serial port and view output in a terminal-like interface, acting as a simple dumb terminal without the broader feature set of full-screen programs.

Picocom is implemented in Python and relies on the pyserial library to handle serial input and output. Its design emphasizes a compact codebase, predictable behavior, and ease of use, making it a popular choice when a minimal, dependable serial console is preferable to larger tools.

Usage and features are focused on essential serial communication. A typical invocation is picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB0, where a user specifies the serial device and baud rate. Picocom supports common serial port parameters such as data bits, parity, and stop bits, and it can enable hardware flow control or manage DTR/RTS signals as needed. The program provides basic terminal functionality, including raw data display and appropriate handling of line endings. It does not include advanced file transfer, scripting, or extensive configuration options, which keeps it compact and predictable.

Availability and ecosystem: Picocom is open-source and widely used on Linux and other Unix-like systems. It is available from many distribution repositories and can also be installed from source. Its lightweight footprint and straightforward operation make it a common choice for debugging and developing with serial devices.

See also: Minicom, Screen, PuTTY, cu, Cutecom.