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Connecting

Most of what FREE-WILi 2 can do is reachable three ways: from a desktop app, over a plain serial terminal, or directly on the device's own screen. Pages elsewhere on this site point back here rather than re-explaining all three each time.

1. The FREE-WILi GUI desktop app​

FREE-WILi GUI is the cross-platform desktop app for GPIO, SPI, I2C, UART, radio, LEDs, audio, scripting, and file management — a point-and-click front end for the same features the device exposes on its own screen and console. It can also be launched straight from the device's SD card with no separate install.

2. A serial terminal over USB​

Plug FREE-WILi 2 into a host over USB and it enumerates as a USB serial (COM) device — look for it in your OS's port list (Device Manager on Windows, /dev/tty* on Linux/macOS). Open it in any serial terminal.

One caution: avoid opening the console at exactly 1200 baud. Opening and closing a port at that rate is the signal the official firmware updater uses to reboot the main processor into its UF2 bootloader — so a serial terminal pointed at the console with that rate set does the same thing by accident: the console port disappears and a FW2Main FBL drive mounts instead, which can easily be mistaken for a crash. The device isn't damaged, and getting out is easy: press yellow + green + blue together (the processor reset described in Recovery mode) and the device boots back to normal. Unplugging the USB cable does not help — on battery power the device simply stays in the bootloader. Copying a FW2Main.uf2 firmware file onto the mounted drive also gets you out, by flashing it (see Firmware update). Ordinary rates such as 115200 are safe. (Confirmed on firmware FW2 v07.)

The serial console presents a menu of letters for navigation and functions. The menus are described in Menus & Commands.

3. Use the screen​

Everything above is also reachable from the touchscreen and buttons, without a host PC at all — see Screen and buttons for how the panel list, folders, and button map work.

Which one you reach for is mostly a matter of convenience: the GUI app is easiest for anything visual or file-based, the serial console is quick for scripting or automation, and the device's own screen needs nothing else plugged in.