introduction.rst

Introduction

This library provides a simple way to create multiple virtual serial devices that communicate over one physical serial connection. A virtual device can be used as a drop-in replacement for Stream like objects such as Serial.

Motivation

Suppose we we have a function someFunction() that takes a command and returns a status. Calling such a function from outside may look something like this.

if (Serial.available()) {
  Serial.write(someFunction(Serial.read()));
}

This approach works as long as there are no other processes using the serial connection. This means that things like debugging information can no longer be printed to Serial.

This is where the serialMux library comes in. By creating virtual serial devices, multiple connections can be made over the same physical serial line.