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!
nRF24L01+ Transceiver Hookup Guide
July 30, 2015
IR Control Kit Hookup Guide
October 2, 2013
MIDI Shield Hookup Guide
October 8, 2015
BC118 BLE Mate 2 Hookup Guide
January 15, 2015
ASCII
June 13, 2016
CP2102 USB to Serial Converter Hook-Up Guide
August 12, 2014
Hexadecimal
March 20, 2014
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Please be aware that the tutorials you find there are no longer
actively maintained.