Tell me more ×
Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for electronics and electrical engineering professionals, students, and enthusiasts. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 3 down vote favorite

Could I read USB data from the mini USB port on an Arduino board, or is that only for installing Sketches?

share|improve this question
2  
What do you mean by "read USB data"? – endolith Jun 20 '11 at 18:33

4 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

What do you mean by "read USB data"? If you are referring to devices like keyboards and barcode readers, then no. You'd have to have a board with "USB host" capabilities. That said, apparently there are shields that can provide this functionality.

share|improve this answer
If it's an arduino Leonardo, you can have it emulate a USB keyboard/mouse/whatever. – Connor Wolf Nov 15 '12 at 23:11
up vote 2 down vote

You can read data from your Arduino, using a program like hyper-terminal on windows. To do that set up hyper-terminal to listen to which ever com port that the Arduino is on with the correct baud rate (Same as in your sketch)

The Arduino is a simple USB to Serial device as Aoi Karasu said.

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

Arduino is not a genuine USB device. It acts as a Serial to USB adapter. You have to scan all COM ports in the system to find which one is it and then talk to Arduino (perform read/write operations) using standard serial port communications that come with your development environment.

share|improve this answer
A USB serial adapter is very much a genuine USB device, unless it has been mis-implemented. One normally uses an operating system level driver which bridges USB to the operating system's serial port API, but that's not mandated by the hardware - one could treat it as a raw USB device with something like libusb and exchange the USB data at application level. – Chris Stratton Nov 15 '12 at 20:50
This is not true for the Arduino Leonardo. The leonardo uses a USB-bootloader, and has no intermediate device. It can emulate any USB device the ATmega USB PHY can. – Connor Wolf Nov 15 '12 at 23:12
up vote -1 down vote

If you are on Linux or OSX, you can use the command:

screen /dev/ttyACM0 9600

ttyACM0 is the name of the device on my system, you may change it according to your system. 9600 is the baud rate, again you can change it.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.