How to Establish A PC-Micro controller USART communication

 Introduction

USART is one of the primitive inter-device communication protocols. It is not used in modern computers. But still, a few mother boards come with the module necessary for an USART communication. Here, in the case of PCs, the port is known as COM port and it follows RS232 protocol. It is no different from USART except for the voltage levels and some additional signals. Commonly MAX232 IC is used to translate the voltage level. MAX232 is a simple voltage translator buffer that converts +12/-12V of RS232 to 5/0V for USART. Other specifications are similar for USART and RS232. To know more about USART read this article from Wikipedia.

USART module in ATmega8

 USART means Universal Synchronous Asynchronous Transmitter and Receiver. USART communication has provisions for full duplex communication, i.e. simultaneous transmission and reception. Synchronous means that a single clock source would be shared by end devices to facilitate communication. Asynchronous means, there would be no synchronized clock source b/w the end devices. But to receive a serial incoming data there is always a need for sampling. In addition to that, the symbol rate (i.e. the baud rate) should be known. That’s why each USART or UART module has an internal baud rate generator module. In earlier micro controllers, no separate baud rate generation unit was there. They used one of the internal timer counter for baud rate generation.
The frame (i.e. number of bits in each transmission) can consist of 5,6,7,8 or 9 data bits. Start bit starts the data transmission. There is one/two stop bit also included. There may be an even/odd parity bit included or there may not be any parity bits. The USART data register (Known as UDR for AVR micro controllers) is a double buffer register. It consists of transmitter buffer and receiver buffer. Both of them share the same I/O address. But when Data written to UDR, the data is saved to the transmitter buffer and serially shifted out from the TXD pin. And when UDR is read, the content in the receiver buffer is read which stores the serial incoming bits from the RXD pins.

Minimal settings to enable USART in ATmega8

 USART module in ATmega8 have got 5 registers (4 8-bit, 1-16bit) associated with it. They are

• 1.  UCSRA  : USART Control and Status Register A. In this Register, three Bits indicates the status of transmission  and reception. Only two bits are enough for basic programming. These are:

a) TXC- Transmission Complete
b) RXC- Reception Complete
These bits are checked before reading or writing data to UDR (USART Data Register)

• 2. UCSRB  : Control and Status Register B. This register is very important to enable the USART Transmitter and Receiver. The bits associated are

a) TXEN: Transmitter Enable Bit. This enables the USART transmitter.
b) RXEN: Receiver Enable Bit. This enables the USART receiver.

• 3. UCSRC  : This is the most important control register for USART. Let’s have a look.

The UCSRC Register shares the same I/O location as the UBRRH Register. When doing a write access of this I/O location, the high bit of the value written, the USART Register Select (URSEL) bit, controls which one of the two registers that will be written. If URSEL is zero during a write operation, the UBRRH value will be updated. If URSEL is one, the UCSRC setting will be updated.

 Bit 7 – URSEL: Register Select

This bit selects between accessing the UCSRC or the UBRRH Register. It is read as one when reading UCSRC. The URSEL must be one when writing the UCSRC.

Bit 6 – UMSEL: USART Mode Select

This bit selects between Asynchronous and Synchronous mode of operation.

Bit 5:4 – UPM1:0: Parity Mode

These bits enable and set type of Parity Generation and Check. If enabled, the Transmitter will automatically generate and send the parity of the transmitted data bits within each frame. The Receiver will generate a parity value for the incoming data and compare it to the UPM0 setting. If a mismatch is detected, the PE Flag in UCSRA will be set.

Bit 3 – USBS: Stop Bit Select

This bit selects the number of stop bits to be inserted by the Transmitter. The Receiver ignores this setting.

Bit 2:1 – UCSZ1:0: Character Size

The UCSZ1:0 bits combined with the UCSZ2 bit in UCSRB sets the number of data bits (Character Size) in a frame the Receiver and Transmitter use.

• 4. UBRR: As mentioned earlier, writing information to UBRR is tricky. Whether we write the data to UBRRH and UCSRC, The same I/O location is used. The only thing makes the destiny differ is the MSB of the data to be written. If the MSB of the data byte is 1, Then the destiny is UCSRC, Else It is destined to be written at UBRRH. And, the Address of the UBRRL is not adjacent to UBRRH. So, although the combination of UBRRL and UBRRH is of 16bits, we cannot write a 16bit data (Like an integer variable) directly to the UBRR register. We need to write the Higher byte to the UBRRH and strip off the MSB from it before writing. And we would have to write the Low byte separately.
•  UDR : The UDR is the storage of the data during the transmission or reception of the data. It is a double buffered register. So it can support a full duplex transmission. Here is what I found In Atmel’s ATmega8 datasheet:

The USART Transmit Data Buffer Register and USART Receive Data Buffer Registers share the same I/O address referred to as USART Data Register or UDR. The Transmit Data Buffer Register (TXB) will be the destination for data written to the UDR Register location. Reading the UDR Register location will return the contents of the Receive Data Buffer Register (RXB). For 5-bit, 6-bit, or 7-bit characters the upper unused bits will be ignored by the Transmitter and set to zero by the Receiver.

The transmit buffer can only be written when the UDRE Flag in the UCSRA Register is set. Data written to UDR when the UDRE Flag is not set, will be ignored by the USART Transmitter. When data is written to the transmit buffer (with the Transmitter being enabled) then the transmitter will load the data into the Transmit Shift Register, when the Shift Register is empty. Then the data will be serially transmitted to the TxD pin.

The receive buffer consists of a two level FIFO. The FIFO will change its state whenever the receive buffer is accessed. Due to this behavior of the receive buffer do not use Read-Modify- Write instructions (SBI and CBI) at this location. Be careful when using bit test instructions (SBIC and SBIS), since these also will change the state of the FIFO.

The target settings for this experiment are:

•   a.   Both transmission and reception will be enabled.
•   b. There would be 8 data bits
•   c. There would be 2 stop bits
•   d. There would be no parity bits
•   e. The transmission would be asynchronous
•   f. The baud rate for the transmission would be 1200 baud
•   g.  The UBRR value for the baud rate is calculated as per the formula given in the datasheets. The formula is

View PDF PC- Atmega8 Communication 

Fig: Circuit Diagram

Text Box: Code For the Micro-controller

#define F_CPU 1000000
#include
#include

#define BAUD 1200
#define MYUBRR (F_CPU/(16*BAUD-1))

void USART_Init( unsigned int ubrr)
{
UBRRH = (unsigned char)(ubrr>>8);
UBRRL = (unsigned char)ubrr;
UCSRB = (1<<RXEN)|(1<<TXEN);
UCSRC = (1<<URSEL)|(1<<USBS)|(1<<UCSZ0)|(1<<UCSZ1);
}

void USART_PUTCH(char ch)
{ while(!(UCSRA&(1<<TXC)));
UDR=ch;
}

char USART_GETCH(void)
{ while(!(UCSRA&(1<=16)
{
printf(” “);
LCDcmd(0xc0);
i=0;
}
}

return 0;
}

Text Box: Code Inside the Header File “LCD83.h”

#ifndef _PROJECT_H
#define _PROJECT_H
#ifndef _AVR_IO_H_
#include
#endif
#ifndef _UTIL_DELAY_H_
#include
#endif
#ifndef _STDIO_H_
#include
#endif
#ifndef DPDDR
#define DPDDR DDRC
#endif
#ifndef CPDDR
#define CPDDR DDRD
#endif
#ifndef CPORT
#define CPORT PORTD
#endif
#ifndef DPORT
#define DPORT PORTC
#endif
#ifndef RS
#define RS PD2
#endif
#ifndef EN
#define EN PD3
#endif
#define DEL1 10
#define DEL2 45
int LCD(char ch, FILE *fp);
int LCD(char ch,FILE *fp)
{ DPORT=(ch>>4)&0x0f;
CPORT=(1<<RS)|(1<<EN);
_delay_us(DEL1);
CPORT=(1<<RS)|(0<<EN);
_delay_us(DEL1);
DPORT=(ch&0x0f);
CPORT=(1<<RS)|(1<<EN);
_delay_us(DEL1);
CPORT=(1<<RS)|(0<>4)&0x0f;
CPORT=(0<<RS)|(1<<EN);
_delay_us(DEL1);
CPORT=(0<<RS)|(0<<EN);
_delay_us(DEL1);
DPORT=(ch&0x0f);
CPORT=(0<<RS)|(1<<EN);
_delay_us(DEL1);
CPORT=(0<<RS)|(0<<EN);
_delay_us(DEL2);

_delay_us(DEL2);
if(ch==0x01||ch==0x02)
_delay_ms(5);
}

void initLCD()
{ DDRC =0x0f;
DDRD =(1<<RS)|(1<<EN);
LCDcmd(0x28);
LCDcmd(0x0f);
LCDcmd(0x01);
LCDcmd(0x02);
stdout =fdevopen(LCD,NULL);
}

#endif //_PROJECT_H

Testing

1.      Hyper Terminal

Open “Start Menu>Accessories>Communication>Hyper Terminal”

It will present you some forms, fill them one by one. First, Give the connection a name:

Then select the port to which the circuit is attached.

Set the configuration of the connection

Usually the terminal window shows only the received characters from the COM PORT and it transmits whatever that is typed in the keyboard. But as the TXD and RXD pins are shorted in the MAX232’s TTL side, there is an echo of whatever that is transmitted from the COM PORT. You can see this in the window screenshot below .

 

Finally the circuit receives the data too, and is shown in the LCD display. The micro controller is so programmed that whenever the lower line fills up with the character received, it clears the entire line.

2.      COM PORT Emulator

There are many free serial data emulator tools  available over the web. One of them is COM PORT Emulator. It is simple and easy to use. Simply Configure the settings as shown below in figures, put your text and start emulation.

Reference Links

Wikipedia Article on USART
Wikipedia Article on RS232
MAX232 Datasheet
ATmega8 Datasheet