Serial communication between Spark and Other

Getting Started
1

I have a Spark that is driving a LCD. I want to connect it via Serial to a RFduino to access a series of sensor values. However, The RFduino will only have new sensor values maybe every 1 minute or so. Both boards will be busy doing other tasks. How would I set this up? Would Spark Poll Rfduino every minute OR RFduino send something when ready? I am not very familiar with interrupts etc so i appreciate any help.

2

@MagicTech, assuming you connect the RFDuino to Serial1, you can have the Spark wait for serial data from the RFduino using:

    if (Serial1.available()) {
      while (Serial.available()) {
        //read the message into an array of chars or whatever, parse it as necessary, etc.
      }   
    }

//Otherwise, nothing received so go on with the rest of your loop

You just need to check the serial port as part of your loop(). :smile:

3

Thank you much again.
It will be wired to Serial2…when that becomes available :wink:
nudge nudge…

4

Hint received, thanks for the nudge :slight_smile:

5

Any news on Serial2as yet?

6

@MagicTech, Serial2 is available on the local build master repo. :smile:

7

Thanks @peekay123 , Any idea when it will be part of the standard online Build? I have never done a local build.

8

It’s supposed to be available but the Make file hasn’t been updated since the last time code was pushed to the WEB IDE.

9

@MagicTech, hopefully on the next production release. @zachary, any comments on this? :smile:

10

Hey gang,

I’m working on this now as I’m working on bringing the tinker 10 branches into the compile server. It should get released by the end of this sprint. :slight_smile:

Sorry about the long delay!

Thanks,
David