This function can be used to read serial string that is passed to an arduino. In our project, we used a Raspberry Pi with a camera and performed some image processing on the captured images and passed the image information to the arduino to steer a car. This script was part of our project to create an autonomous driving car which can follow a li…

read-serial-string-with-arduino.c

/**
Script Name: read-serial-string-with-arduino.c
Author: Stefan Herdy
Date: 23.10.2019
Description: 
This function can be used to read serial string that is passed to an arduino.
In our project, we used a Raspberry Pi with a camera and performed some image processing on the captured images and passed the image information to the arduino to steer a car.
This script was part of our project to create an autonomous driving car which can follow a line with a certain color.

Usage: 
- Use this function as part of your ino-file in your next Arduino-project.
**/
  
//Variables for the serial protocol
const byte numChars = 32;
char receivedChars[numChars];
boolean newData = false;

Serial.begin(115200);

void serialProtocol()
{
  static boolean recvInProgress = false;
  static byte ndx = 0;
  char startMarker = '<';
  char endMarker = '>';
  char rc;
 
  while (Serial.available() > 0 && newData == false)
  {
    rc = Serial.read();

    if (recvInProgress == true)
    {
      if (rc != endMarker)
      {
        receivedChars[ndx] = rc;
        ndx++;
        if (ndx >= numChars)
        {
          ndx = numChars - 1;
        }
      }
         
      else
      {
        receivedChars[ndx] = '\0';            // terminate the string
        recvInProgress = false;
        ndx = 0;
        newData = true;
      }
    }

    else if (rc == startMarker)
    {
      recvInProgress = true;
    }
  }
}