Beginning Arduino Programming

Using Hardware Serial

Every Arduino has at least one hardware serial port. We have already used this port to send our compiled sketches to the Arduino board each time we upload our code. The single hardware serial port on the Arduino Uno is connected to both the USB to Serial convertor chip on the interface board, as well as digital pins 0 and 1. This allows us to either communicate from our computer's USB port to the Arduino board or for the Arduino board to communicate with other devices.

Serial communication is a process of sending and receiving bytes of data in a sequential manner. Two of the microcontroller's pins are needed for this communication: pin 0 is the receive pin marked RX and pin 1 is the transmit pin marked TX. These pins are ...