Communication
Embedded electronics is all about interlinking circuits (processors or other integrated circuits) to create a symbiotic system. In order for those individual circuits to swap their information, they must share a common communication protocol. Hundreds of communication protocols have been defined to achieve this data exchange, and, in general, each can be separated into one of two categories: parallel or serial. Serial UARTs, SPI, and I2C are used with many products in the SparkFun catalog to pass data. They can be used with a serial terminal to help troubleshoot issues or display data. However, there are other methods of communication some of which include IR, RS-232, RS-485, CAN, MIDI, and DMX. Check out the tutorials below to start relaying data between your devices!
IR Control Kit Hookup Guide
October 2, 2013
Serial Terminal Basics
September 9, 2013
I2C
July 8, 2013
IR Communication
February 7, 2013
Binary
February 7, 2013
Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)
January 14, 2013
Serial Communication
December 18, 2012
Old Tutorials
Looking for the old, archived tutorials? Head on over to the
archived tutorials on the main
SparkFun site.
Please be aware that the tutorials you find there are no longer
actively maintained.