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I am using the hardware serial ports of Atmega 328 to connect to a GPS module . A GSM SIM900 module is connected via Software serial . Is it possible to print the debug statements in the Serial window while the GPS module is connected to the hardware serial ports? Both my module and the Serial window is set to 9600 bps baud rate . Also I want to read the GSM responses from the Software serial and print the same in the Serial window for debugging. Is this possible?

Vj1989
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2 Answers2

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Is it possible to print the debug statements in the Serial window while the GPS module is connected to the hardware serial ports?

Yes, that works. If you connect the Arduino TX pin 1 to the GPS RX, then everything you print to Serial goes to both the Serial Monitor window and the GPS device.

This works, because:

  • It's ok if you see the GPS configuration commands (if any) on the Serial Monitor window. Your debug prints will appear after them.
  • The GPS device ignores anything that doesn't start with a '$' character; it ignores all your debug prints.
slash-dev
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While I agree with slash-dev, I feel unless you're really struggling with pin real state, you don't really need to have both the GPS serial and UART on the same pins (unless I'm missing some point or convention, in which case please do correct me).

When I was using a GPS module (GTOP013) with an Atmega328p, I just used the SoftwareSerial library to configure some unused pins (12 and 13 I think? it's been a while) as a dedicated RX/TX lines to the GPS, whilst the atmega's RX/TX remained reserved for a USB connection. Any time I needed anything sent to or from the GPS, I had a function to handle that. Also allowed me to keep polling the lines for data from the GPS to be printed onto the Serial.Console as desired for debugging.

Zaeche
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