Arduino Tutorial 56: How to Graph Live Data Using the Serial Plotter

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In this lesson we show how to plot live data over the Serial Plotter. While there are no formatting options, it really does help to be able to quickly and easily get a live look at your data.

You can get the kit I am using for this series at the following link:

I strongly suggest picking up an arduino nano, since it can plug directly into the breadboard, making a portable system more practical. You can pick one up here:

As projects get more complicated in these lessons, you guys really need to get a set of breadboard jumper wires which allow you to make neater connections on the board in your projects. You can pick a pack of these wires up here:

In addition as projects get more complicated, you are going to need a bigger breadboard. This is a reasonable one here:

Follow this lesson on our WEB site:

#Arduino

[Experts_top_]

Sir, take care and stay safe from Corona. by the way I have learned a lot from this series, thank you

[johnhechtlinger]

this is insane....my serial plotter showed NOTHING...someone else here had the same problem even though the serial monitor worked fine. The solution? I had to remove the space between the colon and "Distance to target is: " in Serial.print . Huh?? Anyway, now it works

[Reenayadav]

Sir please start the series of Raspberry Pi tutorials this will help to improve the skills regrading for engineering.

[norbertvachtler]

Thank you so much for this lesson, and It was the first tie, when I use the serial plotter 😋.
Pls Sir Stay at home, because you are one of the best teacher 😄😄🤗

[matthewcollins]

Present. I do have a tendency to kind of wonder off and play around a bit. And I have saved a copy of every code and taken pictures of every wiring set up, so that I can go back and reference them. when I have finished your tutorials i plan on using this for personal projects.

[sargetester]

A program for this, called 'telemetry ', you can view it on YouTube, search 'arduino telemetry '

[DesertVox]

It's simpler than I thought. Although the feature has been around for a while, I haven't tried it because I thought I had to do a proper research. After watching how simple it is, I'll give it a try. Thanks for the video.

[christianbautch]

Hey Paul, so I tried pulling up my serial plotter but instead of showing me the graph it showed a blank screen and the number values went from left to right instead of bottom to top. Do you know why that would be?

[simontopley]

Out of interest, i upset mine, it was hung, the plotter was hung, the LCD display was stuck, even after changing data ints, i reset the arduino several times, in the end, i reset the sensor then reset the arduino, this cured the problem, can't say why, but there is quite a bit of logic on the pcb, so who knows?

[keyboardlearning]

This Plotter looks really useful! Finding Sin and Cos as functions in the IDE was a good surprise too. I used the Serial Printer first to check that I was getting the results that I was expecting. Finding that the Cos and Sin functions needed the angle in Radians took me a moment to unravel when I looked at the results, but I now have scrolling Sin and Cos waves. Many thanks

[Hino_]

Thank you for the tip on the auto-scaling tendency of the serial plotter, Sir Paul.

The plotting of additional data, i.e. the constants, acts as if we have a lower boundary and an upper boundary.
While it is true that the plotter still auto-scales when data is beyond the boundaries, the graph remains neat and tidy.
This tip is great for when visualizing if a data exceeds a certain limit. And we can see that when the data plot crosses the lower or the upper boundary, i.e. when the data plot crosses the lower horizontal line graph or the upper horizontal line graph.

We are saved from being surprised with constantly varying scales / constantly varying lower and upper boundaries.


Thank you for this lesson Sir Paul!

[MarvelBi]

Maybe it’s just the sensor that came with my kit but my data in the monitor and plotter flickers everywhere. Especially when I tried measuring distance a couple videos ago it would shift between like 193 then 230. My plotter looks like a rectangular wavelength that repeats lol. Any advice on how to fix it Paul?

[MohammadMomin]

Sir, your style of teaching is my favorite.💖You make concepts easier to understand and interesting. Thanks, a lot.

[aaroneipejohn]

hey great idea to prevent auto scaling, but is there a way to prevent it from hiding away old reading? as in could it compress the whole graph horizontally as new data keeps adding in?

[MarvelBi]

Ok it seems to balance out with the boundaries but still really jumpy if anything moves

[gundoggydog]

Am I the only one getting negative numbers for the Ping Travel Time & Distance? I don't get how thats even possible lol

[hughpatterson]

Another great lesson. The serial plotter is an Arduino tool that most people either don't use or don't realize is there. The Arduino IDE is a great piece of software and, while I don't know why they don't give you a few more options regarding the plotter, it's still great. I love that I can use my ESP32 boards as well as other boards with it. Thanks again for a great lesson!

[גלעדהיימן]

Can you use the distance data in another program live (like Unity)?

[joshhodges]

"Let me show you how to do a graph. First of all, you have to KILL-"

[TORDesign]

When I disable serial monitor and restart it, the arduino board reboots. Is there any way to avoid that?