Serial Studio Files

⚠️ Important Notices

• Windows Smart App Control: On newer Windows machines, Smart App Control may prevent Serial Studio from running because the binaries are not code-signed yet. Either install from the Microsoft Store, or turn off Smart App Control (Windows Security → App & browser control → Smart App Control settings).
• macOS: The minimum supported version is now macOS 14.0 (Sonoma).
• Linux: AppImage/.deb/.rpm builds contain bundled glibc dependencies, which makes them available for older distributions too (RHEL 8 / Debian 10 era).

🚀 New Features

• OPC UA driver: Connect to OPC UA servers through an embedded open62541 + mbedTLS stack with all five security policies: secure channels, a server trust store, X.509 client identity, and bounded discovery/browse. The tag browser lets you browse the server's address space, tick the tags you want, and generates the project for you.
• Sparkplug B: The MQTT driver now decodes Sparkplug B topic namespaces, and Serial Studio can publish as a Sparkplug B Edge Node with stable metric aliases — including projects with multiple data sources feeding one node.
• Industrial drivers: New drivers for Siemens S7 PLCs (S7comm), EtherNet/IP PLCs (Allen-Bradley and friends), and IEC 60870-5-104 substations.
• CAN Bus: J1939 and ISO-TP decoding, DBC extended multiplexing, and CAN FD commands on the API server.
• InfluxDB sink: Stream live telemetry straight into InfluxDB.
• Network source: WebSocket and HTTP/HTTPS clients join TCP and UDP in the Network driver.
• MQTT mutual TLS: Client-certificate authentication for brokers that require it.
• Dedicated processing thread: The whole frame pipeline (decoding, parsing, dataset updates) moved off the GUI thread, so the dashboard stays responsive even at extreme data rates.
• LuaJIT scripting: The Lua runtime is now LuaJIT 2.1 with a per-project Safe/Fast execution mode, and the editor shows migration hints for Lua 5.3-era scripts.
• GPU rendering: The 3D plot and the waterfall now render on the GPU, and the 3D plot's stereo (anaglyph) eye channels are properly isolated.
• Command palette: One palette across all contexts, with editor history and workspace switching.
• Dashboard layout: Per-view auto-layout patterns, frozen seams, uniform widget widths in uneven layouts, manual-layout alignment guides, and shared margin/spacing settings.
• Widget polish: Per-widget display titles, freeze modes with a caption menu, per-dataset color overrides, and dataset aliases.
• Plots & FFT: Log-scale axes, FFT ballistics, labeled frequency markers with warning/alarm levels, and FFT/audio (WAV) export from the FFT plot and waterfall.
• Replay: Timeline scrubbing, and huge CSV/MDF4 recordings now stream through a memory-mapped index with background loaders instead of being loaded into RAM.
• Script macro console: A new macro console with a built-in API terminal for driving the app from scripts.
• Historian: Archived sessions are verified for reproducibility, and the SQLite database format is documented for external tools.
• Clearer names: Session Database is now Historian, Shared Memory is now Variables, Virtual Dataset is now Computed Dataset, and Painter is now Canvas Widget. Existing project files keep working unchanged.
• XY plots for everyone: Dataset-vs-dataset (XY) plotting is now free in the GPL build — pick any dataset as the X axis of a plot.
• Trial parity: The 14-day trial now unlocks the complete Pro feature set.
• Licensing: The open-source core is relicensed to GPL-3.0-or-later, and the repository is fully REUSE-compliant.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• UART: Fixed garbled data at 15 Mbaud on Windows (#386) and the COM port dropdown now shows the full port name on hover (#387) — thanks @ZhiyuanYuanNJ!
• Connections: Connection state is now truthful while a link is dialing, phantom TCP connects no longer wedge the connect button, sessions survive link drops, and Modbus dials asynchronously.
• Replay & export fidelity: Dense stream recordings replay and export correctly again, and the Historian flushes open blocks before verifying an archive.
• Windows: Dashboard widgets no longer slide under the window caption.
• macOS: Window title bars no longer mismatch the app theme (per-window appearance is pinned to the painted caption color).
• Linux packaging: The AppImage now bundles the Mesa GL vendor stack, Wayland platform plugins, KaTeX, ALSA pulse plugins, and OpenSSL 3 — it works out of the box on far more distributions.
• Plots: Axis tick anchors are guarded against non-finite and inverted ranges.
• Memory: The frame pool is bounded by bytes and no longer regrows after every structural change; idle stream exports no longer cost memory.
• Licensing: Licensing state is built first at startup, rejected cached licenses revalidate, and late or offline activation no longer downgrades Pro widgets to fallbacks.
• Scripting: Generated protobuf parsers are now LuaJIT-compatible.
• Stability: A full pre-release review sweep closed the remaining blockers across security and dependencies, lazily-opened project editor dialogs are released properly, and the OPC UA stack sizes certificate SAN buffers from the actual name lengths.

📚 Documentation

• The Historian's SQLite database format is documented so external tools can consume recordings directly.
• New and updated manual pages for OPC UA, the industrial drivers, and the Command Palette.

💡 Serial Studio Pro

Unlock advanced features with a license key via About → License Management. The 14-day trial unlocks everything below.

Pro features include:

• 3D Plot, Waterfall, Image View, and Canvas widgets
• Output widgets, operator shortcuts, and runtime mode
• Full MQTT support with Sparkplug B
• Modbus, CAN Bus, OPC UA, Siemens S7, EtherNet/IP, and IEC 104
• Audio input, raw USB & HID, and Process I/O drivers
• Multiple devices in one project
• MDF4 import/export and the Historian
• File-transfer protocols (X/Y/ZMODEM)
• Modbus register-map and CAN DBC importers

👉 Get Serial Studio Pro: https://store.serial-studio.com/buy/ba46c099-0d51-4d98-9154-6be5c35bc1ec

No Budget?

You can still unlock Serial Studio Pro by contributing:

• Share tutorials, videos, or forum posts.
• Promote on social media or dev communities.
• Translate the UI or improve documentation.
• Send logs, protocol data, or donate development hardware.

👉 VALUE-FOR-LICENSE.md (serial-studio.com)

Full changelog: v4.0.3 → v4.1.0