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The Arduino/Genuino Micro has RX/TX pins and can do serial via USB.

But, Arduinos Serial ties them both together, so when using Serial.begin(9600) to send messages between my PC and the Arduino, I cannot use the RX/TX pins as GPIOs.

From what I can tell reading the Atmega32u4s Datasheet, the USART module on the chip is completely separate from the USB controller, so it should be possible to somehow disable the USART Transceiver and Receiver after executing Serial.begin(9600).

Is there something fundamental preventing me from doing this or can it be done? If it can, how would I do it?

iFreilicht
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2 Answers2

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The Serial and Serial1 are two seperated ports. They are not connected. The Serial is the USB serial and does not use pin 0 and 1 at all. The Serial1 is the hardware serial port at pin 0 and 1, but if Serial1 is not used then pin 0 and 1 are normal digital pins that you can use.

Don't be confused by the text labels printed on the board. Pin TX (also called TX1) is D1 and pin RX (also called RX1) is D0.
This is the pinmapping for the Micro: PighiXXX - Micro.

The Arduino Zero uses 'SerialUSB' to indicate the serial port via USB. You can do the same for the Leonardo and the Micro and use the alias 'SerialUSB' in your sketch instead of 'Serial'.
I found it more convenient to use 'SerialUSB' in my sketch, but not many people use it.
The Serial port at pin 0 and 1 is still called 'Serial1'.

Jot
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There is no real reason why it should be tied somehow. And running simple test program seconds that:

void setup() {
  pinMode(0, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(1, OUTPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  digitalWrite(0, LOW);
  delay(400);
  digitalWrite(0, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(1, LOW);
  delay(1000);
  digitalWrite(1, HIGH);
  Serial.println("something");
}

LEDs on TX and RX pins blinks and USB Serial is sending the message (Genuine Arduino Micro, Arduino IDE 1.8.1)

KIIV
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