USB Serial Communication

Perhaps the most important part of any Arduino is its capability to be programmed directly via a USB serial port. Different Arduino boards offer different serial implementations, both in terms of how the hardware implements the USB-to-serial adapters and in terms of the software support for various features. This chapter discusses the various serial communication hardware interfaces offered on different Arduino boards. It explains the features of the ATmega integrated Universal Synchronous/Asynchronous Receiver and Transmitter (USART), covering everything that is required to know about connecting an Arduino to the computer via USB and transmitting data between the two components. The programmer can use special serial characters to format his serial printing with new-lines and tabs. All serial data is transmitted as characters that can be converted to integers in a variety of ways. Data can be sent data from the Arduino to a Processing desktop application.