So I'm writing two different programs, one in Processing and one in Arduino. The Processing app will send data serially to the Arduino to do stuff to a single RGB LED. I'm just learning and experimenting right now, so it's nothing amazing. In the previous iteration of the program I toggled each color individually, but in the current version I have a slider that you drag left and right and it feeds the Hue to the Arduino.

So, reading about Serial communication on the Arduino, it seems pretty straightforward. It sends one byte at a time and you want to set the baud rate the same for both devices to make sure they're talking to each other at the same speed, right? I guess I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around it, and perhaps it's because I'm overcomplicating it (I have a tendency to do that. Deckadance Full Crack. ) If I'm sending all these different color values over serial, how do you tell them apart?

Should I store the bytes in an array? Or should I just send the whole variable over the open port? I know that the Serial.available() function returns the number of bytes that have been sent. Where does it put that info while you're waiting to read it?

Or does it store it? Does it go away if you don't read it? Anyway, correct if I'm wrong on any of my assumptions. As always, I appreciate your assistance. This is exactly what you'd need to do in some form or another. You are essentially designing your own protocol to carry RGB values. You could hard code in some form of separating value as recommended above, or you could even just broadcast without.

In the first case, if the client were to enter mid-stream, it would simply wait for the next R/B/G symbol before picking up the stream. With no info-symbols, all clients would need to see the stream from the very first byte or else they have no sync or frame of reference. Personally, I would code it so that the master sends a start byte, followed by a byte for the R/G/B values.

Stop byte is not necessary in this case. That way, worst case scenario, the client stands-by and ignores all serial data until a start byte is reached. Here is one conventional way to think about it. The serial connection is the transport layer: it doesn't care what you're sending, but it makes sure it does get sent. The question you're asking about how the Arduino should interpret characters you send is really what the protocol is: assuming the two sides have a way to send characters (transport), what should the characters mean (protocol)?