Software Serial Print Statements not showing up on Arduino Serial Monitor

Projects Programming
1

Subject line says it all :slight_smile:

Below is my current code:

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

void setup()
{
 SoftwareSerial blah = SoftwareSerial(12,13);
 blah.begin(9600);
 blah.println("test"); 
}

void loop()
{
  
}
2

How have you connected pins 12 and 13 to your PC and told the serial monitor to use that connection.

3

I haven't, pins 12 and 13 are connected to a Sabertooth Motor Controller Sabertooth 2X12 R/C regenerative dual motor driver

dxw00d:
...and told the serial monitor to use that connection.

How would I be able to do this?

4

So, you're expecting characters sent to an ESC that is in no way connected to your PC to appear in your serial monitor?
Just looking for some clarification.

5

AWOL:
So, you're expecting characters sent to an ESC that is in no way connected to your PC to appear in your serial monitor?
Just looking for some clarification.

Well I was hoping you guys would help clarify some confusion that I had with this, but sarcasm is what is normally returned now a days. I see why this can't be achieved, but can I at least communicate with this in anyway (e.g. keyboard input to increase motor speed)?

6

You use the hardware serial port to communicate with the PC.

7

Can you explain/describe your confusion?
Software serial is simply bit-banging, there's no connection at all to the USB, either physical/electrical or symbolic

8

Is there anyway I would be able to manipulate Arduino's built in IDE to output print statements coming from the Software Serial tx pin instead of the default 1?

9

You could connect an RS232 converter to pin 11 and RS232/USB adapter to the PC, and use a terminal emulator.

10

The "serial monitor" doesn't monitor "all serial activity", it only monitors the serial port that it is physically connected to (which is by default the USB/Serial adapter connected to pin 0/1 of the Arduino; the same one used for uploading the sketch.)

You can have it monitor some other serial port on your computer by changing the "Serial Port" in the tools menu after you upload the sketch and before you start the monitor. But you'll still need some sort of physical hardware on the PC.

If you're not using the regular serial port for anything but interactive commands, I'd go ahead and implement something like:

char esc_debug = true;
void esc_print(char *p)
{
   if (esc_debug) {
      Serial.print("\n[ESC: "); Serial.print(p); Serial.println("]");  //debugging!
   }
   esc.print(p);
}