MAN IT IS HANDY!
I have been using it to help me understand exactly what is going on with my project in order to get it to work as I had planned.
For example, I have been working on a control box that has a 16x2 LCD display and four push buttons. The control box plugs into a big 2m x 2.5m LED display that I made last year for one of the hallways at work. You can control all sorts of functions of the display via the control box such as:
change the animation change the speed of animation change the display scan rate change static graphicsYou can scroll through a menu system on the control box and then push the OK button to select an option, the box then sends out a command to the display board, once the display board has carried out the command, it will send a completed signal back to the box to confirm that it has been done.
The code has been a little tricky, but the UART tool helps me along the way.
How? you may ask...
Simple, everytime I send out a command to the display, I also send the same info through the UART which will display on my laptop screen exactly what info is being transferred.
Here is a little example:
you can also use it to send data from your computer to the pic to give commands or something like that.
Very handy indeed!