Tempest is a serial port terminal for Arduino, Raspberry Pi UART, Cisco console cables, and ESP32, with auto-port-detection on Mac/Win/Linux.
Tempest is a built-in serial port terminal for any USB-to-UART device — Arduino, Raspberry Pi GPIO console, Cisco / MikroTik console cables, ESP32 / ESP8266 boards, FTDI adapters, you name it. Same tab-based UI as your SSH connections, with auto-port-detection so you don't have to remember whether your cable is /dev/tty.usbserial-A50285BI today.
Click + → Serial.
Tempest auto-discovers connected serial ports. Pick yours from the dropdown — or paste a path manually.
Set the baud rate (default 9600; 115200 is common for modern boards; 1200 for very old equipment).
Save and connect.
Common port paths:
macOS
/dev/tty.usbserial-XXXX or /dev/tty.usbmodemXXXX
Linux
/dev/ttyUSB0, /dev/ttyACM0
Windows
COM3, COM4, etc.
Arduino default
9600
Arduino fast / ESP32
115200
Raspberry Pi UART console
115200
Cisco console
9600
Legacy industrial gear
1200, 2400, 4800
Serial connections require Tempest Pro.
macOS: works out of the box — macOS allows user access to FTDI / CDC-ACM devices.
Linux: your user must be in the dialout group to access /dev/ttyUSB* without sudo:
Windows: USB-serial drivers must be installed (FTDI, CH340, CP210x, etc. — plug it in once and Windows usually auto-installs).
Tempest when you also use SSH and want one client for both — same tabs, same theme, same key bindings.
screen / minicom when you're already living in a Unix shell and the serial device is the only thing you need.
PuTTY when you need a dead-simple Windows-only single-purpose tool.
Telnet Client — many serial devices also expose a Telnet management interface
SSH Port Forwarding — tunnel a remote serial-over-IP server through SSH
Last updated
sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER
# log out and back in