Hie,

I am sure that this is a really nice library but It doesn’t want to work with me.

I use 2 arduino board : the first one is an arduino Mega and the second is a duemilanove.
here is the program I uploaded in the first one :

/////////////// first //////////
void setup() {
// initialize both serial ports:
Serial.begin(9600);
Serial1.begin(38400);
Serial1.flush();
Serial.flush();
}

void loop() {
// read from port 1, send to port 0:
if (Serial.available() > 0){
int index=0;
delay(100); // let the buffer fill up
int numChar = Serial.available();
char buffer[numChar-1];
int numCharB = numChar;
for (index=0;index 0){
int index=0;
delay(100); // let the buffer fill up
int numChar = Serial1.available();
char buffer[numChar-1];
int numCharB = numChar;
for (index=0;index<numChar;index++) {
buffer[index] = Serial1.read();
}
Serial.print(”from1 \t\t”);
Serial.println(buffer);
}

}
/////////////// end first //////////

and here is the program I ve upload in the second one :
/////////////// second //////////
#include

NewSoftSerial mySerial(2, 3);

void setup() {
// initialize both serial ports:
Serial.begin(9600);
mySerial.begin(38400);
mySerial.flush();
Serial.flush();
}

void loop() {
// read from port 1, send to port 0:
if (Serial.available() > 0){
int index=0;
delay(100); // let the buffer fill up
int numChar = Serial.available();
char buffer[numChar-1];
int numCharB = numChar;
for (index=0;index 0){
int index=0;
delay(100); // let the buffer fill up
int numChar = mySerial.available();
char buffer[numChar-1];
int numCharB = numChar;
for (index=0;index<numChar;index++) {
buffer[index] = mySerial.read();
}
mySerial.flush();
Serial.print(”from1 \t”);
Serial.print(numChar);
Serial.print(”\t”);
Serial.println(buffer);
}

}
/////////////// end second //////////
My device is well connected but in the second case, receive strange char

Can u help me ??

Thanks a lot !
Florent

PS : sorry for my bad english.

Mikal,

… you’re right !
In fact, It doesn’t work because I don’t master C programming.

I didn’t find a bug in the NewSoftSerial library but you found a bug in my program

All my apologizes!

Great library! I’m really enjoying it so far. If i get a project into some form of complete, i’ll make sure you see your work driving it.

I’m using NewSoftSerial to read NMEA from a GPS module. It works fine - until I introduce a delay(1000) statement elsewhere in my code - it seems that the delay somehow throws NewSoftSerial out, and when I read from the Serial device, lots of characters are missing - is there a way around this?

Hi Mikal - thanks for the quick reply!

After some mucking around I realized pretty much what you explained

Losing the chars wasn’t such a big deal - the hassle was that I was getting several NMEA sentences mashed together. I got around it by flush()’ing the NewSoftSerial after the delay() - it’s no hassle for me to wait half a second or so for a new NMEA sentence to arrive.

That said, processing chars during my delay looks to be a more sensible option, I’ll write something up shortly!

I had one other query - part of my project does RTTY (radio teletype) at 50 baud - I’m handling this with a few functions I’ve written to transmit the data - RTTY is just serial, so I could use a NewSoftSerial object to do the transmission, except that I’m transmitting at 50 baud.

I found that when my GPS NewSoftSerial was ‘active’, the timing for my functions got thrown out (and hence my RTTY was not quite 50 baud). I figure this is due to NewSoftSerial processing incoming data from the GPS when triggered by an interrupt.

I only intend to do one at a time (ie read from the GPS or transmit RTTY), at the moment I’m getting around the issue by creating a bogus (unused) NewSoftSerial, and setting this as the active device when I want to transmit via RTTY - but this is not the neatest solution.

Is is possible to use NewSoftSerial at 50 baud? I realise it would likely mess up timing for other things when receiving chars, but the RTTY is for TX only, and I’m not overly fussed on other timing so long as my 50 baud is true. I’ve had a look at the delay tables in the source, but I’m not sure how the values are derived!

Cheers,
Terry.

Hi Mikal,
Thanks so much for your help on this - I’ll have a go at NewSoftSerial @ 50 baud shortly and see how I get on - I’m not overly fussed about the millis() value being accurate at the moment, though if there were a way to ‘deactivate’ an active NewSoftSerial object, I would use my (simplistic) TX functions - I may end up needing millis() in future.

Reading your previous posts, I can definitely put my hand up for wanting the ability to configure the data/parity/stop bits of the NewSoftSerial object.

Thanks again for your great work!
Terry.

Any chance of support for atmega8? Due to the differently-named vector tables and interrupts, it won’t compile for the atmega8…

Hi - first of all, BIG thanks for providing the community with this helpful library!
..and second - a little question - I am trying to run the library demo using a FunnelIO board (ATM168) at 9600 baud, but get the same weird character mappings that were described in a previous post. Since I only use chars, not strings, do you have any idea as of what might be my problem?
(Yes, I am a newb)

Hi,

I have a Mega board and I need to use an XBee library I have that receives Xbee IOpackets, via “serialEvent()”. The XBee library uses the traditional serial library. I need to parse and send the analog data to an LCD. Can I still use NewSoftSerial library to setup a serial LCD to output on pin 3 and also use the XBee library to communicate with the Xbee via pins 0,1 ?

Thank You,
Paul Jacques

Mikal,

Really nice work on this library.

My project uses half-duplex communications. Therefore, I needed to have the transmit pin go inactive when not in use. This allows other nodes to communicate back on the same pin. I made a couple hacks to your code which seems to be working for me. However, I’m sure the multi-instance feature would get broken with this hack. Below is a summary of the changes I made that work for me.

Just thought you might like to consider adding a half-duplex option to your official source in the future.

Thanks again for the great library,
Jim

// End of NewSoftSerial::NewSoftSerial
if ( transmitPin == receivePin ) {
_transmitPin = transmitPin; // Update new private var.
pinMode( _transmitPin, INPUT );
_halfDuplex = true; // Update new private var.
}
else {
_halfDuplex = false;
}

// Start of NewSoftSerial::write
if ( _halfDuplex == true )
pinMode( _transmitPin, OUTPUT );

// End of NewSoftSerial::write
if ( _halfDuplex == true )
pinMode( _transmitPin, INPUT );

Hey Mikal,

For a project at my university I am using (or at least trying to) this amazing library. The thing is, I do need four serial connections. We are creating objects that can connect to each other. Each object has four nodes to which others can connect. Connection goes in two ways, so every object can send and receive from and to every direct ‘neighbor’. They have to send messages that represent their current state. The problem is to get this to work. I’ve read the ‘Using Multiple Instances’ part but can you possibly give me some more handles on how this would actually work. At this point my messages get messed up big time when using more than one serial. The receiving side gets a lot of ‘ÿ’ instead of the message I send.

Hi
Great library. What about tuneDelay and r24-r30 error ? Are you plan change to delayMicroseconds ?

Thanks for putting the time and effort into this library. I’m trying to use it with a uBlox GPS. No joy with the GPS, so I set up the “Goodnight Moon” test (great book for kids!) with the Arduino 017 IDE on the serial port and Hyperterminal on the mySerial end at 4800 baud 8n1. Board is Mini Pro 5v 16 MHz. While I’m getting characters across in both directions, the decoding appears to be off so they’re just jibberish. Any ideas what’s up here?
Rich

Hyperterminal is using COM3 with a USB-RS232 adapter, lines 2,3,5 (9-pin) are connected to pins 2,3 and GND on the MiniPro. Hardware and software flow control are disabled. I use this setup regularly to communicate with other serial devices. I know it’s operational. There is transmission in both directions. I can type a character into hyperterminal and a character appears at the serial monitor in the IDE. Likewise, I can type a character into the serial monitor and send it, and a character(s) will appear on the hyperterminal. Below is an embellished test app. It prints the word “Data:” and then the character sent, its ascii value in decimal and then in binary:
#include
NewSoftSerial mySerial(2, 3);
void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
Serial.println(”Goodnight moon!”);
mySerial.begin(4800);
mySerial.println(”Hello, world?”);
}
void loop() // run over and over again
{
char c;
if (mySerial.available()) {
Serial.print(”Data: “);
c = mySerial.read();
Serial.print(c);
Serial.print(” “);
Serial.print(c, DEC);
Serial.print(” “);
Serial.println(c, BIN);
}
if (Serial.available()) {
mySerial.print(”Data: “);
c = Serial.read();
mySerial.print(c);
mySerial.print(” “);
mySerial.print(c, DEC);
mySerial.print(” “);
mySerial.println(c, BIN);
}
}
Here’s some output:
HT = Hyperterminal connected to mySerial @ 4800 8n1, no hw ctrl, ASCI
SM = Serial Monitor on serial port @ 9600.
uc = unpritable character

At Startup:
HT output>
«::
:û‹!7åë«::
:û‹!7åë
SM output>
Goodnight moon!

NEXT Type “hello” on HT:
SM output>
Data: 9 1001
Data: uc 0 0
Data: M 77 1001101
Data: uc 0 0
Data: uc 18 10010
Data: uc 0 0
Data: uc 18 10010
Data: uc 0 0
Data: H 72 1001000
Data: uc 0 0

NEXT Type “hello” on SM:
HT output>
Wº=‹¿/¿¿¿:Ÿ—¿¿¿èŸŸŸŸåëw==‹¿5¿¿¿:Ÿ¿¿¿èŸŸŸåëw==‹¿’¿¿
¿:Ÿ¿¿¿èŸŸŸåëw==‹¿’¿¿¿:Ÿ¿¿¿èŸŸŸåëw==‹¿!¿¿¿:¿¿¿èŸåë

As you can see, the ascii decode is correct in the HT->SM direction, just the wrong character, and there’s an extra line printed - why? In the SM->HT direction the characters are all unprintable. BTW, using Hypertermial with the GPS yields proper NMEA strings. Might this be a timing issue?
Rich

hi Mikal, i am having trouble with string and number formaters like simpleMessageSystem firmeta and the likes. do you recommend using softwareserial against the computer?
all i want is to toggle pins from processing…
whats your toughts about this method?
http://todbot.com/blog/2009/07/30/arduino-serial-protocol-design-patterns/

yes, i have been reading about your work all over the arduino echo system and would like to hear your opnion on those parsers and methods.

also thanks for the streaming page,
http://arduiniana.org/libraries/streaming/

Silly me - but of course! The uBlox kit puts level shifters on the UART and that got me going in the wrong direction. I bypassed the level shifters and it works like a champ! Thanks for the tip.
Rich

Hi.

Thanks for your great lib, but I’ve found a strange issue. After a lot of testing I’ve found than if I use the NewSoftSerial plus the Servo lib, my servo gets cray. The hardware is fine, and I can use the servo and the serial device using different code. But as soo as I use the sentence nss.begin(TRATE), the servo begins to move erratically.

I’m new in this, so perhaps the questino is silly, but… Are both libs incompatible?

I know you say up to 28000, but could the code be pushed to 31250 baud for midi communication?

Thanks!!! now it works.

The bad news are than Servo 0016 only works at ouput pins 9 or 10, and I’ll have to rebuild all my wiring.

Hi Mikal,

I am running into issues with a Arduino Pro board running ATmega328P at 8MHz. It seems the delay times don’t work properly for 38400 and 57600 baudrate and the serial output gets garbled. Any clues?

PmgR

Here’s a somewhat tested DELAY_TABLE for running NewSoftSerial on a 20MHz Arduino. Seems to work well for send and receive all the way up to 115200 baud.

#elif F_CPU == 20000000

static const DELAY_TABLE PROGMEM table[] =
{
// baud rxcenter rxintra rxstop tx
{ 115200, 3, 21, 21, 18, },
{ 57600, 20, 43, 43, 41, },
{ 38400, 37, 73, 73, 70, },
{ 31250, 45, 89, 89, 88, },
{ 28800, 46, 98, 98, 95, },
{ 19200, 71, 148, 148, 145, },
{ 14400, 96, 197, 197, 194, },
{ 9600, 146, 297, 297, 294, },
{ 4800, 296, 595, 595, 592, },
{ 2400, 592, 1189, 1189, 1186, },
{ 1200, 1187, 2379, 2379, 2376, },
{ 300, 4759, 9523, 9523, 9520, },
};

#define XMIT_START_ADJUSTMENT 6

Hi,
First, thank you for your really goo work.

I’m using a Arduino nano. I want to connect it to a xbee module.
For now, I just plugged the nano in the usb port of my mac, and used another serial-to-USB cable to plug on pins 2/3 on the arduino.
I’m using some of the example code.
While things going from the arduino to the hardware serial port is fine, the data using the softserial port are messy.
It’s the same kind of stuffs some reported above, but I can’t find any solution. I just understant it’s comming of serial port speed (baud) issues. I’ tried from 9600 down to 300 without more success.

The usb to serial is a keyspan and is working well for other things (LCD screen, serial ports on network equipments…).

1) do you think there is a problem with the Arduino nano V3 (328 chip) ?
2) do you think there is a problem connecting tx/rx from the keyspan cable to the arduino’s pins ?
3) do you have any idea left ?

Many thanks.

Hello! First i want to say-thank you for this great lib! But i have a few questions:
I’m using Arduino nano duo (last gen with 32kb mem) with single USB port
So that means that my arduino have only 1 hardware serial…and i can use it via usb or via pins directly on arduino.

So the question is:
What happens if i query both newsoftserial and real hardware ports at same time ? Do they act same way like if they are both newserial (ie each time i .read() or .availible() 1 of them, others will flush buffers ?
Is there any way to use hardware and software (newsoftserial) port at same time (performance side it will be ok..because both ibus and connection with pc is at 9600, and i’m getting like 1-3 byte’s from\to pc every 5 sec)?
I’m using arduino with BMW I-BUS and need to communicate with car and pc at same time..

I have tested this a bit today..and results are not good - i got a mess in incoming messages from i-bus…dunno why yet (because its like impossible to debug arduino…no way to know what happens when i recieve message from bus), i think maybe its because i query both Serial and NewSoftSerail…so i’m losing ~50% of info from both ports because of flushing buffers.
ps sorry for my bad english.

Mikal ?

btw mess in messages from ibus - they are ok and no problems with baud rates…but i’m like losing big parts of messages
also 1 more question - in what format data arriving to arduino - ie i need to sample it with my original messages and send answers when i see right info, like this:
byte cdmode[7] = {0×68, 0×05, 0×18, 0×38, 0×00, 0×00, 0×4D};

and the answer should be:
byte CDplay[12] = {0×18, 0×0A, 0×68, 0×39, 0×02, 0×09, 0×00, 0×3F, 0×00, 0×01, 0×01};

(it thos messages above in HEX)

Hi,

Thanks Mikal for the answer.
I’m using the code from Rich, just here in the comments :

#include 

NewSoftSerial mySerial(2, 3);
void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Serial.println("Goodnight moon!");
  mySerial.begin(9600);
  mySerial.println("Hello, world?");
}

void loop() // run over and over again
{
  char c;
  if (mySerial.available()) {
    Serial.print("Data: ");
    c = mySerial.read();
    Serial.print(c);
    Serial.print(" ");
    Serial.print(c, DEC);
    Serial.print(" ");
    Serial.println(c, BIN);
  }

  if (Serial.available()) {
    mySerial.print("Data: ");
    c = Serial.read();
    mySerial.print(c);
    mySerial.print(" ");
    mySerial.print(c, DEC);
    mySerial.print(" ");
    mySerial.println(c, BIN);
  }
}

when I type “a” on the softserial console, I have on the arduino console :
Data: O 79 1001111
Data: 0 0

If I enter “z”, I have :
Data: ! 33 100001
Data: 0 0

–> caracters are shift, and I have a 0 sent after that

If I type on the arduino console, I get on the softserial console :

a -> W#=##}#4##gg####V###
z -> W#=##
#ж#####ggg##V###

(on two lines).
This happen whatever baud rate I try.

Again, if I use the usb-to-serial adapter with another hardware, it’s working…

Tomorrow I will try to plug two Arduino nano with a cross cable and see what happen. I’ll see if the problem is really from the usb-to-serial adapter… unless you have a better idea….
Thanks.

Mikal,

Thanks for pointing that out. I seriously did not check !!!
You should put this link (or a better one if you have) in a warning at the start of this page : http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/aug97/cable.html

I’m taking the adaptor apart, but i’m sure this is the root of all my problems.
Wil let you know.
Many thanks

Getting these errors when I try to compile your latest code:

C:\dev\Arduino\arduino-0017\hardware\libraries\NewSoftSerial\NewSoftSerial.cpp: In member function ‘void NewSoftSerial::begin(long int)’:

C:\dev\Arduino\arduino-0017\hardware\libraries\NewSoftSerial\NewSoftSerial.cpp:412: error: invalid type argument of ‘unary *’

C:\dev\Arduino\arduino-0017\hardware\libraries\NewSoftSerial\NewSoftSerial.cpp:413: error: invalid type argument of ‘unary *’

C:\dev\Arduino\arduino-0017\hardware\libraries\NewSoftSerial\NewSoftSerial.cpp: In member function ‘void NewSoftSerial::end()’:

C:\dev\Arduino\arduino-0017\hardware\libraries\NewSoftSerial\NewSoftSerial.cpp:429: error: invalid type argument of ‘unary *’

Hello Mikal, thank you for this lib, I’ve been using it for two months on a thesis project

Sadly, it suddenly stopped working for me today and I was wondering how to troubleshoot it.

I’ve been using this to communicate with a UART RFID reader @19200, and then pass it onto a python program via hardware serial @9600.

When I run the test program that comes with the download (NewSoftSerialTest.pde), the soft serial doesn’t print the “Hello World” message it should. All I get in the serial monitor @4800 is one broken character like à or Ó. It prints “Goodnight moon” when I switch to the hardware serial @57600. When I send “a” etc. to the monitor, it doesn’t print anything at either 57600 or 4800.

My RFID readers used to send a broken character (int value -1) when there is no tag present, and print ‘*’ + 16-byte tag ID when there’s one. Now all it’s sending is a broken character.

I am assuming this is a problem with the Soft Serial communication because the RFID readers are printing the tag well over hardware serial when monitored in Terminal > Screen, with the ATMEGA chip removed. I have also re-installed the lib, Arduino 017 and the FTDI driver, and tried two different RFID readers as well. On a potentially related note, Arduino seems to forget to refresh Tools > Serial Port list half of the times when I plug in different boards, which also started today.

How would you go about troubleshooting this? I am using it with Arduino Pro Mini 5v w/ATMEGA 328 16HMz, on Snow Leopard. I appreciate your help.

Hello.

How i can configure start/stop with it’s library? Or it’s only planned feature?

Mikal — thanks for the reply.

I believe it’s grounded properly. Tried switching rx/tx as well Also tried:

Watching the NSS rx/tx pins on oscilloscope: the pins are sending and receiving, we see the dense square wave, and they both read 5v when idle.

Pull up resistor on NSS RX pin as suggested here http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1256934324: Makes no difference

Using pins 0,1 for NSS like you suggested here http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1252024653/4: worked as is, without NSS.available() or NSS.read()

So we think that NSS is transmitting but not receiving. NSS.available() or NSS.read() isn’t working, as if there is nothing in the buffer.

We tried same Arduino code and circuit on two Snow Leopard Macs, one Linux machine, one Windows (via VMware Fusion), and it only works on Windows now. All running Arduino 017, two Arduino mini pro 328 16mhz boards.

I don’t have a good hypothesis. Does this ring any bell?
Much appreciated –