Movi using hardwear Serial1 on Ardunio Mega R3

dforster · January 20, 2020, 1:19pm

Hi,

Is there a correct procedure to connect the Movi to a Mega 3 using hardware serial?

I dont want to use software serial on pins 10/11 (they are used by a network shield already). I know I could always move these pins (by editing the MOVIShield.h file and changing the software serial pins specified) but would prefer to use hardware serial (hardware Serial1 to be exact).

Maybe a forced hardware serial example would be good in the examples directory (say LightSwitch in beginner folder) for the Mega R3 (as so many shields already use pins 10/11 and the Mega R3 has 3 good usable hardware serial ports).

Cheers

Dan

Dylan_K · January 20, 2020, 6:07pm

It is very straight forward. You can see my entire sketch here that uses Serial1 on a Mega here:

github.com

ecm-bitflipper/Arduino-ECM-1228079/blob/master/MCSS/MCSS.ino

#include "arduino2.h"
#include <Arduino.h>
#include <stdint.h>

#include <SPI.h>

#define USE_LONG_FILE_NAMES 0
#define USE_SEPARATE_FAT_CACHE 1

#include <SdFat.h>
#include <SdFatUtil.h>

#include <SFEMP3Shield.h>
#include <SFEMP3ShieldConfig.h>
#include <SFEMP3Shieldmainpage.h>

#define MP3_SONG_VOLUME 25

#include <MOVIShield.h>

This file has been truncated. show original

The key points: Declare a global variable for MOVI:

MOVI movi(false, &Serial1);

In your setup() routine, start Serial1 with the baud rate you desire. If you do not wish to change your MOVI’s baud rate on the SDCard as detailed in the manual, you can use 9600 which is the default (meant for Software serial. I highly recommend changing it as I have below to 115200 if you are going to use HardwareSerial. MOVI will be snappier that way.)

Serial1.begin(115200);

Good luck with it.