mcp-uart

Serial Port MCP Server for AI agents. Lets Claude, Cline, Cursor, and other MCP-compatible AI tools talk to UART/serial devices.

Features

• 11 Tools: list ports, open, write, read, wait (single frame / full response), reconfigure, status, close, monitor start/stop, list encodings, list protocols

• 12 Encodings: UTF-8, ASCII, Latin-1, GBK, GB2312, GB18030, Big5, Shift_JIS, EUC-KR, Hex, Base64, Binary

• 6 Protocols: Raw, Line (newline), Custom delimiter, Modbus RTU, Hex frame, SLIP (RFC 1055)

• Smart Wait: serial_wait collects a full device response (silence detection), serial_wait_frame returns on first frame

• Real-time Monitor: Auto-opens a terminal window showing TX/RX data live, like a serial assistant

• Time-aware Read: sinceLastRead mode returns only new messages with timing metadata

• File Logging: serial_start_monitor logs all data to a file, viewable with tail -f

Related MCP server: UART MCP Server

Install

From npm

npm install -g mcp-uart

From source

git clone https://github.com/yourname/mcp-uart.git
cd mcp-uart
npm install
npm run build

Setup

Claude Code

claude mcp add uart -- mcp-uart

Or add to ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "uart": {
      "command": "mcp-uart"
    }
  }
}

Cline (VS Code)

Open Cline -> MCP Servers -> Edit Configuration, add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "uart": {
      "command": "mcp-uart"
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to Cursor MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "uart": {
      "command": "mcp-uart"
    }
  }
}

From source (not installed globally)

If running from a local clone instead of npm install -g:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "uart": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/mcp-uart/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Usage

Once configured, talk to your AI naturally:

"List available serial ports"
"Open COM3 at 115200 baud with GBK encoding and Modbus RTU protocol"
"Send 01030000000A in hex"
"Wait for the device to finish responding"
"Read any new data since my last read"
"Switch to 9600 baud"
"Close the connection"

Tools Reference

Standalone Serial Monitor

Run directly from the terminal (no AI needed):

# Global install
serial-monitor COM3 115200 utf8

# From source
node dist/monitor.js COM3 115200 utf8

Type and press Enter to send. Ctrl+C to exit.

Supported Encodings

Supported Protocols

License

MIT