Atmega/Arduino (Soft-) Serial Ports

In the implementation of the “reverse” channel of my home automation system, the RF receiver will transmit radio data back to the master controller which in return sends it to the computer. Since the atmega168/328’s processors used in the standard Arduino only have one hardware-based serial port (UART), I tried for the software-based serial that ships with the Arduino IDEs. Transmitting data out works like a charm (as seen previously), but receiving it is quite a challenge, mostly due to timing problems. The software serial port doesn’t work unless all the sketch does is gather data — there’s no time for processing or it will start losing data.

My next attempt was to use an interrupt-based version of the software serial port. I briefly thought about writing one, but then I found this great libary, the New SoftSerial. It is as simple to use as the original library, but unfortunately once I connect the RF receiver, the processor is too busy handling interrupts and nothing really works. The noise picked up by the RF module must simply overwhelm it. That’s too bad, this works beautifully on my attiny2313-based receiver when using the hardware UART.

A software-based solution is clearly not the answer, some hardware is required. I can think of a few options

1. Abandon the Arduino altogether and use an AVR controller with multiple UARTs — not ideal, I like the idea of basing the master on Arduino for the hackability factor
2. Use a logic gate and an external clock generator to sample/filter the signal exactly at the right timing required for 1200 bps (the maximum reliable speed I could get to work for the RF modules) – this could still lead to timing issues
3. Create an attiny2313-based “daughter-board” which handles all the nitty gritty of the RF communication using the hardware-UART and then communicates to the Arduino via a few of the regular digital ports (I’m thinking asynchronously via about 4 pins)

Clearly this requires a little more thinking, but I’m leaning towards the third option — it encapsulates all the protocol logic on the attiny’s and the Arduino library that would need to be written to communicate with it would be very light-weight. And let’s not forget the attiny’s are only about two bucks.

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