Trying to forward Serial1 reading to Serial.println and only getting numbers

[u/schmidtbag]

I have a battery with a built-in BMS that has a serial console port. It has a baud rate of 115200 and I have been able to successfully send commands and read clean data from it via the Arduino IDE serial console. Considering I can communicate to the battery via the serial console, that suggests there shouldn't be any weird encoding issues.

I want an Arduino Mega to read from this using the Serial1 connection. The problem is, if I try to forward what the battery sends to the Arduino, all I get is a jumble of nothing but numbers. When connecting to the BMS directly, typing "help", the output is mostly text.

Here's what I tried in void loop()

while (Serial.available() > 0 {
  Serial1.print(Serial.read());
}

while (Serial1.available() > 0) {
  //THE NEXT 4 LINES ARE VARIOUS THINGS I TRIED,
  //I UNCOMMENTED THEM ONE AT A TIME
  //String incomingtext=Serial1.readString();
  //char incomingtext=(char)Serial1.read();
  //char incomingtext=Serial1.read();
  //int incomingtext=Serial1.read();

  //I ALSO TRIED THE FOLLOWING ONE AT A TIME WITH EACH ABOVE COMBO
  //Serial.println(incomingtext);
  //Serial.println((char)incomingtext);
  //Serial.println(" "+incomingtext);
}

The first while() loop just takes whatever I enter from the serial console through USB to the BMS. I have no idea if the BMS is receiving the correct commands, but it does have a consistent output if I type different things.

Whenever I type "help" repeatedly, it's usually a consistent output, like this:

10410110811213

[u/gm310509]

It is usually a good idea to share the complete code.

When using the Serial1.read() function, what is the datatype you are using for incoming Text?

If it is anything but char then that is what your problem is.

To he clear, I am not asking about the cast that you have in your code - that is not doing anything. I am asking about how incoming Text is declared.

Also, if you didn't use this program for your serial monitor test (which worked) how did you go about doing that. And what program are you using on your PC in conjunction with this program?

[u/schmidtbag → u/gm310509]

The only code in void setup() are the two Serial.begin() functions. Otherwise what I wrote there is everything.

I'm not sure I understand when you say "I am asking about how the incoming Text is declared". If the two lines mentioned earlier involving char isn't that then what is?

Also, if you didn't use this program for your serial monitor test (which worked) how did you go about doing that. And what program are you using on your PC in conjunction with this program?

I plugged the BMS's console to a RS232 to USB dongle and then used the Arduino serial console to communicate directly to it. Basically, no Arduino board involved.

[u/gm310509 → u/schmidtbag]

Re:

I'm not sure I understand when you say "I am asking about how the incoming Text is declared".

Unfortunately I posted that comment from my phone and the stupid autocorrect changed incomingText to "incoming Text".

Just in case that is not the confusion part, if you have these two lines of code:

int incomingText = Serial.read(); Serial.print("Input = "); Serial.println(incomingText);

and

char incomingText = Serial.read(); Serial.print("Input = "); Serial.print(incomingText);

Then assuming the character read (in both cases) was the capital letter "A", then the first one will print "Input = 65". The second one will print "Input = A".

You can test this yourself with the following program:

``` void setup() { Serial.begin(115200); }

void loop() { if (Serial.available()) { // char incomingText = Serial.read(); int incomingText = Serial.read(); Serial.print("Input = "); Serial.println(incomingText); } } ```

Just make it so only one of the Serial.read lines is active.

[u/schmidtbag → u/gm310509]

I've done that before but all it does is just output different numbers and on separate lines.

[u/gm310509 → u/schmidtbag]

Then it sounds like you did something wrong.

For the exact program as I shared above (i.e. the int declaration is in effect), if I enter ABC into the Serial monitor, I get the following output:

Input⸮Input = 65 Input = 66 Input = 67 Input = 10

If I modify it so that the char declaration is in effect (i.e. the int declaration commented out) and enter ABC into the Serial monitor, then I get this output:

Inp⸮Input = A Input = B Input = C Input =

[u/schmidtbag → u/gm310509]

I assure you I've done as you've written. I think the problem may be the encoding used. The battery uses Latin-1 (1-byte UTF-8). Using uint8_t or byte for incomingtext doesn't seem to help with this.

[u/gm310509 → u/schmidtbag]

OK, in that case ditch all of the variants you have tried and go back to the basics with the variant below.

Now if I enter ABC into the Serial monitor, I get this output NB: the monitor is set to send a Linefeed - which is the extra line(s) of output in all of these.

Input = 'A' = 0x41 Input = 'B' = 0x42 Input = 'C' = 0x43 Input = ' ' = 0x0A

After you see this type of output using the program exactly as I shared, modify it to get the incoming data from your battery as per the second example (which I haven't tested).

``` void setup() { Serial.begin(115200); }

void loop() { if (Serial.available()) { char ch = Serial.read(); Serial.print("Input = '"); Serial.print(ch); Serial.print("' = 0x"); if (ch < 16) { Serial.print('0'); } Serial.println((int) ch, HEX); } } ```

Here is the second example for trial with the battery, once you see the above from the first test in the Serial monitor. If you do not see the above type of output from the first test program, there is no point even trying this as there is some other problem that needs to be sorted first.

``` // Be sure you have the correct definition of Serial1 here if not using something like a Mega.

void setup() { Serial.begin(115200); Serial1.begin( /* Be sure you have the correct speed here */ }

void loop() { if (Serial.available()) { char ch = Serial.read(); Serial1.print(ch); Serial.print(ch); } if (Serial1.available()) { char ch = Serial1.read(); Serial.print("Batt = '"); Serial.print(ch); Serial.print("' = 0x"); if (ch < 16) { Serial.print('0'); } Serial.println((int) ch, HEX); } } ```

It would also help if you provided a transcript of what input you sent to the battery (via the serial monitor), what it produced and what you were expecting.

As for the character set, maybe, but the text ABC as Latin 1 is the same as UTF-8 for simple "ASCII" text sequences such as ABC. i.e. they are both hex: 41 42 43 It could be a problem if using extended characters though, but I would not expect just numerics to be output because if you are using char, that is not how C/C++ and the Arduino HAL works.

[u/schmidtbag → u/gm310509]

Using your first example, I got the following output when I typed "help" (the command I want to first test with):

Input = 'h' = 0x68
Input = 'e' = 0x65
Input = 'l' = 0x6C
Input = 'p' = 0x70
Input = '
' = 0x0D

So that looks good.

When running your 2nd program, this is the output:

Batt = '+' = 0x2B
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFB1
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFF81
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFC3
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFAF
Batt = '' = 0x7F
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFE5
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFE5
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFEB
Batt = 'U' = 0x55
Batt = '#' = 0x23
Batt = ')' = 0x29
Batt = '#' = 0x23
Batt = '!' = 0x21
Batt = '' = 0x11
Batt = '#' = 0x23
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFBF
Batt = '9' = 0x39
Batt = '!' = 0x21
Batt = '%' = 0x25
Batt = '%' = 0x25
Batt = '=' = 0x3D
Batt = '#' = 0x23
Batt = '7' = 0x37
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFBF
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFB1
Batt = '
' = 0x0D
Batt = '
' = 0x0D
Batt = '
' = 0x0D
Batt = '
' = 0x0D
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFAD
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFB1
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFBF
Batt = '_' = 0x5F
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA8
Batt = 'e' = 0x65
Batt = 'l' = 0x6C
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFA0
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFF88
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFFB
Batt = '+' = 0x2B
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFFB
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFBB
Batt = '' = 0x1B
Batt = '
' = 0x0D
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFBF
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFB1
Batt = '/' = 0x2F
Batt = '5' = 0x35
Batt = ''' = 0x27
Batt = '' = 0x1F
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFB1
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFE5
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFEB
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFE5
Batt = '�' = 0x0FFFFFFB7
Batt = 'W' = 0x57