The NeoHWSerial class is a drop-in replacement for the Arduino built-in class HardwareSerial. It adds the capability to handle received characters with a user-defined function during the RX interrupt. This can improve performance significantly by eliminating all processing associated with storing and retrieving characters in the ring buffer and all polling code that constantly checked for new characters: available and read are unnecessary.

Installation

1. Download the NeoHWSerial master zip file.
2. Extract all files into a tempory working directory.
3. Create a NeoHWSerial subdirectory in your Arduino/Libraries directory.
4. Copy all files from the version number subdirectory that corresponds to your IDE version into the NeoHWSerial subdirectory you created in step 1. For example, if you are using Arduino IDE version 1.0.5, copy all files from the extracted NeoHWSerial-master/1.0.5 subdirectory into your Arduino/Libraries/NeoHWSerial subdirectory.

Usage

To handle all received characters with your function, you must register it with the specific NeoSerial[n] instance:

#include <NeoHWSerial.h>

volatile uint32_t newlines = 0UL;

static void handleRxChar( uint8_t c )
{
  if (c == '\n')
    newlines++;
}

void setup()
{
  NeoSerial1.attachInterrupt( handleRxChar );
  NeoSerial1.begin( 9600 ); // Instead of 'Serial1'
}

Remember that the registered function is called from an interrupt context, and it should return as quickly as possible. Taking too much time in the function will cause many unpredictable behaviors, including loss of received data. See the similar warnings for the built-in attachInterrupt for digital pins.

The registered function will be called from the ISR whenever a character is received. The received character will not be stored in the rx_buffer, and it will not be returned from read(). Any characters that were received and buffered before attachInterrupt was called remain in rx_buffer, and could be retrieved by calling read().

If attachInterrupt is never called, or it is passed a NULL function, the normal buffering occurs, and all received characters must be obtained by calling read().

The original HardwareSerial files were modified to include two new methods, attachInterrupt and detachInterrupt, and one new data member, the private _isr:

    typedef void (* isr_t)( uint8_t );
    void attachInterrupt( isr_t fn );
    void detachInterrupt() { attachInterrupt( (isr_t) NULL ); };

  private:
    isr_t  _isr;

NOTES

To avoid name collisions, all HardwareSerial instances are prefixed with "Neo" in this replacement library. All parts of your sketch, including other libraries, must use

• NeoSerial instead of Serial,
• NeoSerial1 instead of Serial1,
• NeoSerial2 instead of Serial2, and
• NeoSerial3 instead of Serial3.

If there are any references to the original HardwareSerial instances, you will get one or more linker errors:

core.a(HardwareSerial.cpp.o): In function `__vector_18':
<Arduino Dir>\hardware\arduino\cores\arduino/HardwareSerial.cpp:115: multiple definition of `__vector_18'
NeoHWSerial\NeoHWSerial.cpp.o: <Libraries Dir>\NeoHWSerial/NeoHWSerial.cpp:116: first defined here
core.a(HardwareSerial.cpp.o): In function `serialEvent()':
<Arduino Dir>\hardware\arduino\cores\arduino/HardwareSerial.cpp:112: multiple definition of `rx_buffer'
NeoHWSerial\NeoHWSerial.cpp.o: <Libraries Dir>\NeoHWSerial/NeoHWSerial.cpp:90: first defined here

If you see this error, some part of your code is still using Serial, Serial1, Serial2 or Serial3. Be sure to check all your libraries.

All serialEvent code has been removed, as this modification is intended to solve polling-related problems. serialEvent uses a polling technique.

As new Arduino IDEs are released, new versions will appear in the root of this repository, named with the Arduino IDE version number.

See Also

If you are also using software serial ports, you may be interested in NeoICSerial or NeoSWSerial.