Oli Glaser wrote:

> While I'm on the subject though - is it worth adding handshaking to
> make it more solid? Can I expect the odd case of overflow/data loss
> just sending it like this. I figured that at 4800 baud and with a
> 50ms delay between 8-byte (2 bytes per sensor)readings sent that it
> should be easily slow enough not have any issues. However, in the
> interests of making things as bulletproof as possible, could someone
> advise me how to implement handshaking, of where there is a good
> discussion of the subject..

If you're talking about "solid", handshake is worth it. As I understand
your situation, it should work most of the time, but there's nothing
that guarantees that a PC isn't "offline" for a second or more.

You can use hardware handshake or software handshake. I'm assuming that
you only need handshake for sending data to the PC. For hardware
handshake, you monitor the RTS line and stop sending while it is off.
For software handshake, you monitor the serial in and stop sending after
an XOFF character until you receive an XON character. The handshake type
needs to be supported by the terminal program you're using on the PC
end, and typically it needs to be enabled specifically.

Gerhard
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