Hi,

I’ve found some ¿bugs? on newsoftserial library:

On line 76, change this “{ 115200, 1, 17, 17, 12, },” for this “{ 115200, 1, 16, 16, 12, },”

On line 94, change this “static const DELAY_TABLE table[] PROGMEM=” for this “static const DELAY_TABLE PROGMEM table[]=”

Any possibility to use non-standard baudrates?

Thanks for this great work

Hello Mikal,

Your library looks great!

I`m using a Sanguino (Atmega644p) and when i compile i get the following error:

E:\arduino-0021\arduino-0021\libraries\NewSoftSerial\NewSoftSerial.cpp: In member function ‘void NewSoftSerial::begin(long int)’:
E:\arduino-0021\arduino-0021\libraries\NewSoftSerial\NewSoftSerial.cpp:410: error: ‘NULL’ was not declared in this scope
E:\arduino-0021\arduino-0021\libraries\NewSoftSerial\NewSoftSerial.cpp: In member function ‘void NewSoftSerial::end()’:
E:\arduino-0021\arduino-0021\libraries\NewSoftSerial\NewSoftSerial.cpp:428: error: ‘NULL’ was not declared in this scope

When i compile it for an arduino is works fine.

What do i need to change, to make it work for the 644?

Thanks!

,Collin

Wouldn’t it be better to have NewSoftSerial inherit from Stream instead of Print? That way code could be written to use either Serial or NewSoftSerial by just having a reference to a Stream class.

Are you actively working on the RTS/CTS solution? I’m working on a project, and am about to try implementing the RTS/CTS, but I’ll be doing it as a “hack” job I’m sure. So I just wanted to see if there’s something I can either help with, or if you’re close I would love to help test. I literally have till Monday night to get my solution working.

Thanks,
Jarvis

@Mikal
The overhead of the Stream class is negligible since it’s virtual. I changed the NewSoftSerial to inherit from Stream (about four lines of code difference) and testing with the NewSoftSerialTest example project the code gets 46 bytes bigger (4920 to 4966 bytes). Same result with the TwoNSSTest project.

The problem with using the Print class is that it’s one-directional. If we want to be able to read() the Stream class is needed, and NewSoftSerial already implements the methods needed (just change available() to return an int).

Anyways, thanks for your awesome contribution to the Arduino community! This class should be included with the IDE.

I´m trying to sync an Arduino FIO with XBee with the coordinator of my network. The code works as follows:

1. A coordinator sends to arduino FIO its UNIX time.
2. Arduino FIO receives the UNIX time of the server, process it and set the system time with setTime();

The time is set correctly but the system allways reports the same time (calling to hour(), minute() and second() ). I am using newsoftwareserial to debug the information.

example:

11:17:58 2 12 2010
11:17:58 2 12 2010
11:17:58 2 12 2010
11:17:58 2 12 2010
11:17:58 2 12 2010
…
…
…
11:17:58 2 12 2010

It is possible that newSoftwareSerial disables the interrupts that works with the system time???

Has anyone had any troubles trying to go from NSS->NSS? It never seems to work for me, but if it is:
UART->NSS
or
NSS->UART
it works fine. Is it because the Arduino boards that I am using are of different sizes? Or speed?

Just wondering! :)

Mikal,

Thanks for putting out useful tools such as NewSoftSerial.

I know that you have the MEGA in the “upcoming improvements” section. How is that coming? I have a use for the MEGA that I can’t seem to get to communicate with equipment such as the Touchshield Slide. The best that I can figure out is to use NewSoftSerial to transmit data from the MEGA to the Touchshield, but I can’t seem to get data to be received from the Touchshield. If you want, see more comments here: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1291762907

Mikal,

Thanks a lot for writing this library. I am using it with your TinyGPS library on one project. It’s great to have it up and running in minimal time on my side:) I love all your reverse geocache stories too. I’ve told it to a bunch of people already.

Here is a request for you: can you add an event handler on the newSoftSerial library so that when the buffer is full, an event handler is called.
Like: nss.attach(&feedGPS);

The reason to my request is that if I am running a GPS routine with other stuff, I have to feed the GPS constantly, making programming more difficult and less efficient. If I attach that feedGPS to the event handler of the newSoftSerial, then it automatically feeds the GPS so the GPS will be up to date if I read it any time. I can just call gps.getXXX() any time I need GPS information. Other times I can have arduino run an LCD and gather uer input and display proper information, not all of which are GPS-related.

Liudr

I’d like to have a look at that Mega beta as well. I’ve got a 2560, three fast serial devices, and two slow serial devices that I need to talk to.
Love TinyGPS, gets along great with my Venus at 115.2K and 8Hz update rate.

Hey, Mikal. I started to make some changes to your code in my GitHub project. I noticed that you started a GH project for NSS a couple of months ago, but haven’t added the code yet. I was hoping to create a fork, but couldn’t wait any longer. :-)

I’ve implemented a few changes you might be interested in, including inheriting from Stream and adding peek(), peek(offset), and remove(offset) methods. The relevant commit is here: https://github.com/blalor/NewSoftSerial/commit/daab2811182b808d73d27e27ce7006d4c9ce14a6

I’d appreciate your feedback!

Thanks,
Brian

Hi Mikal,

Firstly, thank you for an excellent library, and article describing it.

I’d like to ask if there’s a way I can ‘piggy back’ on the interrupts you use, or else use a separate interrupt. The reason I ask is that I’d like to add some simple networking to this (as a separate library). The idea being that you can send a message something like this:

[dest][length][message][checksum]

Obviously, to receive that string of characters requires a bit of careful state work, but it means you can send short messages reliably between devices (sort of like VirtualWire does). My plan is to have an interrupt constantly check the NewSoftSerial available() method, and then attempt to receive messages (into an RX buffer). The main loop() can then be checking networking.available() to see if actual messages were received.

So… the thing is another layer of interrupt handling (for receiving). I could either use the same interrupt (so long as I write very efficient code), or else use another (lower priority?) interrupt. What do you think my chances are? ;-)

Hey,

Thanks a lot for this library; I was starting to lose hope of being able to read my RFID reader with arduino! However, I am still having some problems…

The RFID reader runs at 57600 baud rate, and my only issue with using the UART is the reader uses inverted logic, and there were some bytes that are missed. I am not sure why it does that… perhaps because of all the processing I have to do to invert it again; would that cause it to lose bytes? In any case, when I use the NSS, it reads all 38 bytes… nearly fine. It isn’t perfectly accurate. I get an extra “1″ every now and then. So for a 4-byte number that I am expecting to be 993101, the first byte is supposed to be a 0, but it is instead sometimes 128, which makes the whole number become negative. I’m not sure if that’s the only issue; I haven’t dissected the results too fully yet.

There’s another inaccuracy that is more persistent… When expecting a 42, I instead get 170, which is simply an extra 1.
42=0010 1010, 170=1010 1010.

Do you have any suggestions for tweaking the library a little bit to get it more accurate?

I’m using arduino-0022 software, NSS 10 library(the one posted here at the time of writing this) on an arduino Uno (16MHz)

Thanks,
Mo

Hi,

it is possible to catch and generate UART-Break-Conditions? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_asynchronous_receiver/transmitter#Break_condition)

There are some Systems (like my Heating-System) which marks a end of a data-telegram with this Breaks.

Regards,
Fred

Mikal,
You are the man. I am brand new to Arduino but I had your NewSoftSerial and TinyGPS (with Sparkfun breakout for Venus634LPx) up and running in no time. Excellent!

hi, thanks for NSS…
i need some help. i have seeeduino (atmega168 @ 16Mhz) soft Arduino 0022 NSS 10c version. with NSS RX is all ok but with TX is somthing wrong…
simple test:
////////////////////////////////
#include

NewSoftSerial mySerial(3, 4);

void setup()
{
mySerial.begin(9600);
}

void loop()
{
mySerial.print(‘a’);
delay(1000);
}
////////////////////////////////

and from debuging terminal i got ONLY FIRST char ok. terminal show bits (01100001 11000010 11000010 11000010……) after reset board the same (01100001 11000010 11000010 11000010……). if i change char ‘a’ to ‘z’ i got (01111010 11110100 11110100……). all bits are shifted by one bit. can someone help me? thanks

@Mikal,

I am working on the same issure with getting the touchshield slide to transmit to the the Arduino Mega on pins 2,3 which are interupts 4,5 on the mega and not the 0,1 of the 328.

Can you send me a copy also.

Thanks,
Chris

@dullard,

I sent a beta copy of the new version to your email. Try it out!

Mikal

Hej Mikal,

this library looks like a very nice piece of software! Do you think it’s possible to use it for very low bitrates (50 baud or less) as well? And how would I calculate the timing values (DELAY_TABLE table[]) then?

I’d like to use it for data transmission from a high altitude amateur balloon down to earth and that requires such a slow bitrate.

Thanks in advance and regards, Rainer

Hello there! how i can use this library to comunicate with my Bluetooth Bee conected to shield and to arduino? i need to configure it, so i need a code that send what i send to arduino to xbee shield and what the bluetooth answer send me back, sorry for my english!

i got this:

Xbee Shield
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/xbee%C3%82%C2%AE-shield-v11-by-seeedstudio-p-419.html

Bluetooth Bee
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/bluetooth-bee-p-598.html

Arduino Uno
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno

Thanks a lot for the library!

Hi,

I have fiddled with the delay constants and found that, in my particular environment (Duemilanove, 16MHz, IDE 0022), they need be corrected as follows to work.

{ 14400, 76, 160, 160, 157, },
{ 9600, 117, 242, 242, 239, },
{ 4800, 243, 494, 494, 491, },
{ 2400, 494, 996, 996, 993, },
{ 1200, 995, 1998, 1998, 1995, },
{ 300, 4004, 8017, 8017, 8014, },

For 19200bps and up, they work as is.

Thanks,
rin

@Mikal,

Yes, I expected the contrary but that’s what I saw. The range of tolerance was small even with lower speeds (300 or 1200), such as within 5 or 6 ‘rx intrabits’. Perhaps in lower speeds, the number of multiplication is bigger so the time difference is bigger, whereas in higher speeds smaller multiplication makes more constant time of delay?

These values are stable over several different Duemilanove clones (different crystals, some even with Ceralock) which I’ve tested, so it’s not the crystal. They are all with FTDI chips.

Anyway, thanks for this great work.

rin, Tokyo

Hi,

Thanks a lot for this great library.
I try to communicate with a device which only accept:
8 bits of data
1 bit of even parity
2 stop bits
Is there a way to configure your library to handle this?

Hello Mikal,

A newbie here. You say “It extends support to all Arduino pins 0-19″. I recognise 0-13 on the Duemilanove. Do the A0-A5 pins correspond to the 14-19?

Thanks for your great library resource.

Cheers,

Ross

@Mikal

Is there a way I can look at each char coming on interrupt and trigger a function based on that char? It has been a while since I’ve coded in C and I am very rusty on the code for the arduino. I’m actually just looking for the CR on this one as it is a request from another computer for data. Running 2400. Thought about just using the interrupt on 2 but it would drop LOW multiple times during the request and I don’t want to push data out every time that happens.

A tried to use this library to read from mobile phone – It works OK only for short phone serial buffers – but when I try to get longer SMS message form the phone (using AT commands) – I can only read 63 bytes out of 90 in my example. After sending appropriate AT command – the response form the phone should be 90 bytes long – but function “available” shows only 63 bytes – and there is so many bytes waiting in the phone buffer indeed. Looks like the rest of the chain is cut off. I don’t know – if I do something wrong – but there is no problem reading the whole message form the phone when I use typical Serial function in place of NewSoftSerial. Also there is no problem reading when I use Hyperterminal.

HI,
does newsoftserial support arduinoBT?

hi, im a newbie here.. does your library support mega 1280? i wanted to use the software serial on duemilanove but right now i only have mega. So, can i just try the software serial on mega first?

I have newsoftserial running on a atmega644p. below the macros needed to set the interupt structure to match the pinout listed for the Sanguino.

Have only tested on a few pins on portC. If any one else has a Sanguino, would you verify. When i get a board setup, i will finish verifying the rest of the pins. This should work on the 1284 as well, since the interupts are the same.

This is running in Arduino v22.

#if defined(__AVR_ATmega168__) || defined(__AVR_ATmega328P__)

#define digitalPinToPCICR(p) (((p) >= 0 && (p) <= 21) ? (&PCICR) : ((uint8_t *)0))
#define digitalPinToPCICRbit(p) (((p) <= 7) ? 2 : (((p) <= 13) ? 0 : 1))
#define digitalPinToPCMSK(p) (((p) <= 7) ? (&PCMSK2) : (((p) <= 13) ? (&PCMSK0) : (((p) <= 21) ? (&PCMSK1) : ((uint8_t *)0))))
#define digitalPinToPCMSKbit(p) (((p) <= 7) ? (p) : (((p) = 0 && (p) <= 31) ? (&PCICR) : ((uint8_t *)0))
#define digitalPinToPCICRbit(p) (((p) <= 7) ? 1 : (((p) <= 15) ? 3 : (((p) <= 23) ? 2 : 0)))
#define digitalPinToPCMSK(p) (((p) <= 7) ? (&PCMSK1) : (((p) <= 15) ? (&PCMSK3) : (((p) <= 23) ? (&PCMSK2) : (((p) <= 31) ? (&PCMSK0) : ((uint8_t *)0)))))
#define digitalPinToPCMSKbit(p) (((p) <= 7) ? (p) : (((p) <= 15) ? ((p) – 8) : (((p) = 10) && ((p) = 50) && ((p) = 62) && ((p) = 10) && ((p) = 50) && ((p) = 62) && ((p) = 10) && ((p) = 50) && ((p) = 62) && ((p) = 10) && ((p) = 62) && ((p) <= 69)) ? ((p) – 62) : \
0 ) ) ) ) ) )

What I am doing wrong?
I have this code witch was working on the old library, but with newsoftwaresserial is not working.
I am trying to communicate with a GPS from Libelium.
Who can help me and tell me where is my mistake.

SoftwareSerial SerGPS(9,8);

//Create a ‘fake’ serial port. Pin 8 is the Rx pin, pin 9 is the Tx pin.
SerGPS.begin(9600);
while(byteGPS != 42)
{ // read the GGA sentence
if (SerGPS.available());
byteGPS = SerGPS.read();
inBuffer[i++]== byteGPS;
}

Yes, newsoftserial disables millis timer significantly at lower baud rates. My experience in processing a continuous data stream at 2400 baud shows that millis reports 44,000 milliseconds per minute.

Sanguino, atmega644 and atmega644p support available on http://code.google.com/p/sanguino/issues/detail?id=15

I’ll be glad if you add it to your current code.