An Overview Of The Arduino to PIC Communication
In this article we learned how its very possible for two different brands of microcontrollers can talk to each other and pass commands. Common communications protocols like SPI, I2C and serial communication are used for this purpose all over the place in electronics. For this article we only demonstrated that serial communication could be used for this purpose, but we added in how to do it wirelessly with XBee modules, a fun little bonus as everyone loves to get things done with less wires and more flexibility.
What To Do Now
With a basic system like this designed and implemented, there are a lot of different routes you can take. Moving from a single duplex to a full duplex system would be a great first step. That way each microcontroller could both send and receive commands. Building something like that would be more tricky but definitely more fun. Alternatively, you could apply the ideas in this article to real projects, like robotics, animatronics, etc.
Conclusion
The goal of this article was to build a wireless transmitter/receiver system with two non-related microcontrollers; an Arduino and PIC. In that goal we were successful and we proved out how using a common communication protocol like serial communication makes it super easy for two intelligent devices to talk with each other, especially when they have their own dedicated hardware serial modules. Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something from this article!
If you have any further questions, I implore you...don't be shy, take a look at the forums or ask a question there. I check them out regularly and love getting comments & questions.
In this article we learned how its very possible for two different brands of microcontrollers can talk to each other and pass commands. Common communications protocols like SPI, I2C and serial communication are used for this purpose all over the place in electronics. For this article we only demonstrated that serial communication could be used for this purpose, but we added in how to do it wirelessly with XBee modules, a fun little bonus as everyone loves to get things done with less wires and more flexibility.
What To Do Now
With a basic system like this designed and implemented, there are a lot of different routes you can take. Moving from a single duplex to a full duplex system would be a great first step. That way each microcontroller could both send and receive commands. Building something like that would be more tricky but definitely more fun. Alternatively, you could apply the ideas in this article to real projects, like robotics, animatronics, etc.
Conclusion
The goal of this article was to build a wireless transmitter/receiver system with two non-related microcontrollers; an Arduino and PIC. In that goal we were successful and we proved out how using a common communication protocol like serial communication makes it super easy for two intelligent devices to talk with each other, especially when they have their own dedicated hardware serial modules. Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something from this article!
If you have any further questions, I implore you...don't be shy, take a look at the forums or ask a question there. I check them out regularly and love getting comments & questions.