The IDF monitor tool is mainly a serial terminal program which relays serial data to and from the target device's serial port. It also provides some IDF-specific features.
- Press and follow it by one of the keys given below.
* - * Ctrl+T
- Send the menu character itself to remote
-
* - * Ctrl+]
- Send the exit character itself to remote
-
* - * Ctrl+P
- Reset target into bootloader to pause app via RTS line
- Resets the target, into bootloader via the RTS line (if connected), so that the board runs nothing. Useful when you need to wait for another device to startup.
* - * Ctrl+R
- Reset target board via RTS
- Resets the target board and re-starts the application via the RTS line (if connected).
* - * Ctrl+F
- Build and flash the project
- Pauses idf_monitor to run the project``flash``target, then resumes idf_monitor. Any changed source files are recompiled and then re-flashed. Target``encrypted-flash``is run if idf_monitor was started with argument``-E``.
* - * Ctrl+A (or A)
- Build and flash the app only
- Pauses idf_monitor to run the``app-flash``target, then resumes idf_monitor. Similar to the``flash`` target, but only the main app is built and re-flashed. Target``encrypted-app-flash``is run if idf_monitor was started with argument``-E``.
* - * Ctrl+Y
- Stop/resume log output printing on screen
- Discards all incoming serial data while activated. Allows to quickly pause and examine log output without quitting the monitor.
* - * Ctrl+L
- Stop/resume log output saved to file
- Creates a file in the project directory and the output is written to that file until this is disabled with the same keyboard shortcut (or IDF Monitor exits).
Any keys pressed, other than ``Ctrl-]`` and ``Ctrl-T``, will be sent through the serial port.
IDF-specific features
=====================
Automatic Address Decoding
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whenever ESP-IDF outputs a hexadecimal code address of the form ``0x4_______``, IDF Monitor uses addr2line_ to look up the location in the source code and find the function name.
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If an ESP-IDF app crashes and panics, a register dump and backtrace is produced, such as the following::
Guru Meditation Error of type StoreProhibited occurred on core 0. Exception was unhandled.
By default, if esp-idf crashes, the panic handler prints relevant registers and the stack dump (similar to the ones above) over the serial port. Then it resets the board.
Optionally, the panic handler can be configured to run GDBStub, the tool which can communicate with GDB_ project debugger. GDBStub allows to read memory, examine call stack frames and variables, etc. It is not as versatile as JTAG debugging, but this method does not require any special hardware.
In this case, if the panic handler is triggered, as soon as IDF Monitor sees that GDBStub has loaded, it automatically pauses serial monitoring and runs GDB with necessary arguments. After GDB exits, the board is reset via the RTS serial line. If this line is not connected, please reset the board manually by pressing its Reset button.
In the background, IDF Monitor runs the following command::
IDF monitor can be invoked as ``idf.py monitor --print-filter="xyz"``, where ``--print-filter`` is the parameter for output filtering. The default value is an empty string, which means that everything is printed.
Restrictions on what to print can be specified as a series of ``<tag>:<log_level>`` items where ``<tag>`` is the tag string and ``<log_level>`` is a character from the set ``{N, E, W, I, D, V, *}`` referring to a level for :doc:`logging <../../api-reference/system/log>`.
For example, ``PRINT_FILTER="tag1:W"`` matches and prints only the outputs written with ``ESP_LOGW("tag1", ...)`` or at lower verbosity level, i.e. ``ESP_LOGE("tag1", ...)``. Not specifying a ``<log_level>`` or using ``*`` defaults to Verbose level.
Use primary logging to disable at compilation the outputs you do not need through the :doc:`logging library<../../api-reference/system/log>`. Output filtering with IDF monitor is a secondary solution which can be useful for adjusting the filtering options without recompiling the application.
If the last line of the output in your app is not followed by a carriage return, the output filtering might get confused, i.e., the monitor starts to print the line and later finds out that the line should not have been written. This is a known issue and can be avoided by always adding a carriage return (especially when no output follows immediately afterwards).
-``*`` can be used to match any tags. However, the string ``PRINT_FILTER="*:I tag1:E"`` with regards to ``tag1`` prints errors only, because the rule for ``tag1`` has a higher priority over the rule for ``*``.
- The default (empty) rule is equivalent to ``*:V`` because matching every tag at the Verbose level or lower means matching everything.
-``"*:N"`` suppresses not only the outputs from logging functions, but also the prints made by ``printf``, etc. To avoid this, use ``*:E`` or a higher verbosity level.
- Rules ``"tag1:V"``, ``"tag1:v"``, ``"tag1:"``, ``"tag1:*"``, and ``"tag1"`` are equivalent.
- Rule ``"tag1:W tag1:E"`` is equivalent to ``"tag1:E"`` because any consequent occurrence of the same tag name overwrites the previous one.
- Rule ``"tag1:I tag2:W"`` only prints ``tag1`` at the Info verbosity level or lower and ``tag2`` at the Warning verbosity level or lower.
- Rule ``"tag1:I tag2:W tag3:N"`` is essentially equivalent to the previous one because ``tag3:N`` specifies that ``tag3`` should not be printed.
-``tag3:N`` in the rule ``"tag1:I tag2:W tag3:N *:V"`` is more meaningful because without ``tag3:N`` the ``tag3`` messages could have been printed; the errors for ``tag1`` and ``tag2`` will be printed at the specified (or lower) verbosity level and everything else will be printed by default.
