thank you all for replying,
So the master is sending "on," "off," now and the serial in on the slave gets the on and off but the led is not going on and off, im guessing another rookie mistake:
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
SoftwareSerial mySerial(13, 12); // RX, TX
const int ledPin = 10; // the pin that the LED is attached to
String readString;
void setup() {
Serial.begin(4800);
mySerial.begin(4800);
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}
void loop() {
if (mySerial.available()) {
char c = mySerial.read(); //gets one byte from serial buffer
if (c == ',') {
//do stuff
// turn on the LED:
if (readString == "on") {
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
}
// turn off the LED:
if (readString == "off") {
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
}
Serial.println(readString); //prints string to serial port out
readString=""; //clears variable for new input
}
else {
readString += c; //makes the string readString
}
}
}