Serial

2 things tagged Serial.

Case studies

Laboratory hardware / industrial instrumentation (Rushabh Instruments)

Scriptable control panels for lab instruments over serial

Rushabh’s instruments talk over a serial port in fixed-width strings. A wrong command fails quietly. The first control app was the usual Android approach: hardcode a screen per machine, wire each button to a string, ship a build. That worked until the next panel showed up. Then it was another layout, another activity, another release for what was often “just one more button.” Technicians needed changes faster than Studio releases allowed, and behaviour had to depend on what the instrument sent back, not only on what the app sent out.

  • Android (Java)
  • custom DSL / lexer / AST executor
  • expression evaluation
  • serial port I/O (android_serialport_api)

Writing

serial app

Building a scripting language for hardware panels

Rushabh's lab instruments speak in fixed-width serial strings, and every new panel meant another hardcoded Android screen. So I built a language instead: a lexer, a typed statement tree, an expression evaluator, and buttons you place on a photograph of the machine.

Aug 2026 · 7 min read