Im relatively new to micros and have a conundrum. My senior project involves using a touch screen and xbee modules for wireless communication. My question is, since both of them require serial communication, should I find a micro that has 2 serial ports, or is it possible to have both of them connected to the same serial port and select which one to communicate with?
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\$\begingroup\$ That depends on how much time and money you're willing to throw at the problem. \$\endgroup\$– Ignacio Vazquez-AbramsCommented Nov 22, 2014 at 21:55
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2 Answers
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You can't, in general, connect them to a single serial port. You'll need a microcontroller with (at least) two serial ports.
Sometimes, if you're trying to really minimise the cost of the microcontroller, you can implement a seral port using GPIO pins and I/O instructions. This can be very effective for a transmit-only serial port. But I would not recommend it for a project like this.
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Logic level serial communication doesn't normally support multiple devices. You need two UARTs.
The SPI bus supporters multiple devices which are each selected using a chip select (CS) line.
The I2C bus supports multiple devices which are selected using inband protocol addressing.
answered Nov 22, 2014 at 21:56