Terminal emulators in Azure Sphere development

Terminal emulators are a broad class of software applications that allow commands to be passed to a local host or remote device and display the output to a local screen or window in a graphical user interface. In Azure Sphere application development, terminal emulation is used in two main ways: one, as a way to receive output from a high-level application via a Telnet or raw TCP connection, and two, to receive output from a real-time application via a serial connection. You can recognize the connection type from the information supplied to establish the connection. If you are given a hostname or IP address together with a port number, you want a Telnet or TCP connection. If you are directed to a serial port and given a baud rate, you want a serial connection. While virtually any terminal emulator can create the necessary connections, some make it easier than others.

For Windows users, terminal emulators that allow you to specify connection parameters via dialog boxes are convenient. Two free and open-source packages that provide this functionality are the following:

Many similar packages are available.

Linux users typically have Telnet available as part of the standard installation; adding a simple serial connection tool such as minicom or picocom should provide a complete tool set.