About serialExample

Learning Objectives

This example demonstrates communication with external devices over the serial port. In this example, you will connect to a serial device, read incoming byte packets from the connected device, and send response messages over serial.

This example covers the following functions:

• Connecting to a serial device
• Reading incoming byte packets from the connected device
• Sending response messages over serial
• Updating graphics based on the incoming byte information

In the code, pay attention to:

• Listing all serial devices with serial.listDevices(), which logs a list to the console. Make sure the port ID you specify is the same that your Arduino or other device is connected on.
• When a device is connected, check the console logs to ensure that you're not getting any Serial connection errors and have successfully connected to the specified port
• To signal successful communication back to the Arduino, send a trigger message: serial.writeByte('a')
• Read incoming messages with serial.readBytes()
• Store incoming messages in an array bytesReturned[3] to match the set of data being sent from the Arduino sketch. This can be changed to match the size of discrete data packets being sent from Arduino.

Expected Behavior

When launching this app, you should see a white screen with gray text showing the following information:

• nBytes read
• nTimes read
• read byte
• time of reading

Instructions for use:

• Click the mouse to send a communication trigger to Arduino and receive a serial packet in return. The displayed values onscreen should change to reflect sent and received data.

Other classes used in this file

This example uses no other classes.