Serial port issue?

Projects Programming
1

Hi,

I have connected an EasyCAT shield to an Arduino and am getting the expected printouts in the serial monitor when I include the line below in my code -

Serial.println(EASYCAT.BufferOut.Byte[0]);

Separately I have connected a [DMX shield](Arduino DMX Shield - DFRobot Arduino DMX shield is,the top of the" arduino.&text="The MAX485 based shield can,Slave and as RDM transponder.) to my Arduino and I am able to control a Light with a loop function like this -

void loop() {
  static int dimmer_val;
  dmx_master.setChannelValue ( 1, dimmer_val++ );  
  delay ( 100 );
}

I want to be able to connect both shields to the same Arduino and use the value from the EasyCAT to control the DMX, for example -

dmx_master.setChannelValue ( 1, EASYCAT.BufferOut.Byte[0] );

But the code wasn't even loading onto the Arduino and I understand that it may be because both the EasyCAT and Conceptinetics library want to use the serial port.

Does anyone know any ways round this?

2

ON an Arduino Uno you could use software-serial for a second serial connection.
Or change-over to an Arduino Mega which has 3 hardware serialinterfaces

best regards Stefan

3

Mega has 4 hardware serial.
Serial() is connected to the USB/Serial adapter.
Serial1(), Serial2(), and Serial3() are only connected to IO pins. Each could be connected to an FTDI Basic or equivalent and also connected to a USB port on a PC if desired. Or to a Raspberry Pi as another example.
If connecting to the devices at 0/5V levels, don't forget the Gnd connection.

4

Thanks, very helpful.

This lead to further research where I discovered the use of the serial port in the EasyCAT library is not essential - only for initialisation feedback, so it can be removed.

Looking forward to making a project in the future which does use two serial ports!