SoftwareSerial

[andriyadi]

Is it possible to use SoftwareSerial?
I have a requirement to communicate with a serial module. While the main/hardware serial is used for debugging, need another serial port to communicate with that module.

Please advice. Thanks.

[dlabun]

Maybe? I am not if anyone has tried using a Soft serial port yet.

What type of debugging are you trying to do? Just console line prints?

[MartinRobotz]

Certainly not, because softserial relies on pinchange Interrupts, which itself use pin mapping. This works only on specified ports and Pins. -- Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android Mobiltelefon mit WEB.DE Mail gesendet.Am 24.02.17, 01:44, dlabun <notifications@github.com> schrieb: Maybe? I am not if anyone has tried using a Soft serial port yet. What type of debugging are you trying to do? Just console line prints? — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[andriyadi]

Hi @dlabun
Yes, forgot to say that what I meant by "debugging" is "Serial.print" kind of stuff, to see what's going on. I read about RTT. Anyone has experience with it, if using RTT from Arduino environment/framework? As it seem it requires including code from Segger.

@MartinRobotz do you mean for specialized pins that supports pin interrupt, Software Serial works?

Thanks guys!

[MartinRobotz]

For these pins it will work, but you need to know their mapping and the corresponding interrupt vector number PCINT0,1,2.... Then you have to adapt the SoftSerial library and put these interrupt vectors in the ISR. Every arduino uses different PCINT vectors for pin change interrupt. In theory that should be enough. Have a try.

[dlabun]

@andriyadi What I use do to with Microchip PICs when I ran out of UARTs is run all of my debugging information out over an I2C to UART bridge. It could be an option for you, check out the NXP website below.

http://www.nxp.com/products/signal-chain/bridges/single-uart-with-i2c-bus-spi-interface-64-bytes-of-transmit-and-receive-fifos-irda-sir-built-in-support:SC16IS740_750_760#featuresExpand

[sandeepmistry]

SoftwareSerial is not supported at the time.

However, I believe it should be possible to port the AVR SoftwareSerial and CurieSoftwareSerial (Arduino 101) SoftwareSerial libs to nRF5x boards. Pull requests welcome.

[andriyadi]

@dlabun SC16IS740 could be one option, thanks for the idea.

Found a breakout something like this and Arduino library like this. The library seems easy to port. Hope I can get my hands on it soon and will report the progress.

[rogerclarkmelbourne]

In case its any use.

@rayburnette ported the PJRC version of SoftwareSerial STM32

See
http://www.stm32duino.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6

(Pauls original post was here https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/17461-SoftwareSerial-doesn-t-compile-for-Teensy-3-it-seems but there may be an updated version somewhere else)

Edit,

The ESP8266 guys also now have software serial, so that may also be a good starting point in terms of porting....

[andriyadi]

I finally went to SC16IS740/50/60 route. Forked this library and add some convenient methods. Here's my repo: https://github.com/andriyadi/UART_Bridge

I'm using Sparkfun's breakout to test it out.

[micooke]

I am fairly familiar with the SoftwareSerial library, and this looks like a pretty up to date port :
https://github.com/arduino-org/arduino-core-nrf52/tree/master/libraries/SoftwareSerial

It needed a slight mod as the attachInterrupt function doesnt return the bitMask, but the problem is that it didnt work for me using this core. I tried the simple hardware/software serial echo example and it stalled after the first software print.

Very wierd as the cores are very similar, and i assume it works for the arduino core

[prjh]

@micooke can confirm this! - Have done the same. but it doesen't work correctly. I swichted then over to Adafruit nRF52, because they have done the same and it does also not work (on my side)) I I asked in the Adafruit forum. I don't know but for hattach it does work - we couldn't solve it at the moment. By the way - the original Arduino Primo SoftwareSerial on their HAL is fully functionall at all!