Hey everyone,
This is my first question in the forum. I'm using 10 Dynamixel XL320 motors for my robot. They are divided into 3 sets: all motors in each set are daisy-chained. The robot also has a micro-LiDAR (Benewake TFMini) module attached. I want to control the entire thing with an Arduino nano board. The motors use TTL serial but has only 3 pins (no receiver end on the Arduino) so I can define 3 separate SoftwareSerial ports for them. I could also define another SoftwareSerial for the LiDAR (which requires both RX and TX on the Arduino). Now here's my question: am I right in saying that I can make the robot work with 4 SoftwareSerial ports itself and there's no need to go for boards with more hardware serial ports (like Teensy)? My explanation is that if we look into the limitations of SoftwareSerial,
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Only one SoftwareSerial port can receive at a time : This is fine because the motors don't have RX port on the Arduino end.
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You cannot simultaneously transmit and receive : This I am not quite sure. I guess it (LiDAR) doesn't need to transmit and receive simultaneously. Does anyone have experience with this?
I really don't want to go for Teensy board since I already own an Arduino nano.
BTW, I didn't check this out for myself because I don't have the micro-LiDAR yet.
Thanks,
Aswin