One question I get all the time is this:
I know how to send data from Arduino to (Processing, OpenFrameworks, etc). But how to I send data from (Processing, OpenFrameworks, etc) to Arduino?
Many people don’t seem to know that Arduino has built-in functions for parsing streams of data. Back with version 1.0.1 Michael Margolis’ excellent TextFinder library was merged into the core Stream library. So you can send an ASCII string like this:
123, 456, 789
And Arduino can read it and convert the numeric characters back into numeric values.
For example, let’s say you want to send a string to set the values of two LEDs that you’re going to fade using the analogWrite() command. Your data might look like this:
P1, 255\n P2, 127\n
(the \n represents a newline character, ASCII 10)
Using the parsing functions, you can look for the initial P character, then parse the numeric string that follows it until a non-numeric character (like the comma) comes along. Then you can do another parse until the next non-numeric character (like the newline at the end of the line) comes along. It’s as simple as this:
if (Serial.find("P")) {
// read and parse characters before the comma:
int ledNumber = Serial.parseInt();
// read and parse characters after the comma:
int brightness = Serial.parseInt();
}
Here’s a full example.
So the next time you’re trying to figure out how to read data in Arduino, first decide what your data looks like, then get to know the Stream functions. In addition to find() and parseInt(), there’s also readBytes(), readBytesUntil(), parseInt(), parsefloat(), and a few other goodies.
The really nice thing about these functions is that they work on any library based on Stream. So, for example, you can also use them on the Ethernet and WiFi and GSM Client and Server classes. This makes parsing network data much simpler.